Combining deduplication with locality for efficient and fast storage

A method comprises:

• receiving, by a computing device of a dispersed storage network (DSN), a storage request to store one or more portions of a data object, wherein the data object includes a plurality of portions;
• determining, by the computing device, whether the one or more portions are already stored within a DSN memory;
• when the one or more portions are stored:
• determining, by the computing device, a retrieval demand for a portion of the one or more portions;
• when the retrieval demand for the portion of the one or more portions is below a first threshold, indicating, by the computing device, that an existing copy of the one or more portions will be used for retrieval requests of the one or more portions within the DSN;
• when the retrieval demand for the portion of the one or more portions is above the first threshold:
• copying, by the computing device, the existing copy of the one or more portions to create a first one or more portion copies;
• indicating, by the computing device, that the existing copy of the one or more portions will be used for retrieval requests from a first group of user computing devices of the DSN;
• and
• indicating, by the computing device, that the first one or more portion copies will be used for retrieval requests from a second group of user computing devices of the DSN.