Method for performing enhanced data protection of memory device with aid of in-channel coding, and associated apparatus

A memory controller, for performing enhanced data protection of a memory device with aid of in-channel coding, the memory device comprising the memory controller and a non-volatile (NV) memory, the NV memory comprising at least one NV memory element, the memory device undergoing a reflow process for mounting the memory device onto a printed circuit board (PCB) of a host device within an electronic device, the memory controller comprising:

• a processing circuit, arranged to control the memory controller according to a plurality of host commands from the host device, to allow the host device to access the NV memory through the memory controller;
• wherein:
• during a system level initialization of the electronic device, the memory controller is arranged to start performing expansion-to-non-expansion storage format conversion on preloaded data in the NV memory, wherein the preloaded data has been preloaded into the NV memory in a first storage format, for inserting extra parity information obtained from the in-channel coding among multiple data chunks, and operations of the expansion-to-non-expansion storage format conversion comprise garbage collection (GC) and multiple error correction operations for correcting multiple errors in the preloaded data during the GC;
• and
• during the expansion-to-non-expansion storage format conversion, the memory controller is arranged to convert the preloaded data from the first storage format into a second storage format, for collecting the multiple data chunks from the preloaded data and releasing partial storage space among total storage space occupied by the preloaded data previously stored in the first storage format.