Abstract: An approach is provided for a system and a method for distributed storage based on regenerating codes. The system comprises a data source and multiple storage-nodes. The data source comprises a control module and an encoder. The control module segments data into multiple fragments. The encoder generates multiple data stripes from the fragments, in which each data stripe is generated according to a corresponding encoding vector and each of the encoding vectors is linearly independent to each other. The data source transmits each of the data stripes to one of the corresponding storage-nodes according to the encoding vectors. The data source receives an extension command configured for extending a selected storage-node, and generates an extension storage-node with a set of other randomly selected storage-node whereby to construct a linear combination with the data stripes and encoding vectors of the selected storage-nodes. The aforementioned extension storage node is homogeneous to the existing storage nodes.