1. A dispersed storage device for use within a dispersed storage network, comprising: an interface; and a processing module operable to: slice an encoded data segment of a data object into error coded data slices; determine slice metadata for the error coded data slices; determine memory characteristics of dispersed storage units capable of storing the error coded data slices; select a set of dispersed storage units for storing the error coded data slices based on the slice metadata and the memory characteristics; and output, via the interface, the error coded data slices to corresponding ones of the set of dispersed storage units.