Method and apparatus for error management in a solid state disk drive

A method of correcting for column short errors for a partition of data read into a buffer from a memory using an error correction code, comprising:

• using the error detection circuit (EDC) to determine whether a sector data failure occurred, and if so, then:
• reading a read column short (CS) data stripe from the memory;
• comparing the read CS data stripe to a known value to determine a CS condition;
• performing the following if the CS condition occurred:
• masking the partition of data with the read CS data stripe to form a first masked partition of data having a first value written into the partition of data for each bit position associated with a column short;
• reading the first masked partition of data into the buffer using the EDC;
• performing the following if a second partition data failure occurred;
• masking the partition of data with the read CS data stripe to form a second masked partition of data having a second value written into the partition of data for each bit position associated with a column short;
• reading the second masked partition of data into the buffer using the EDC;
• marking an error correction code (ECC) long bit in the memory block if the written stripe of data differs from the read stripe of data;
• retrieving data stored in the memory;
• and
• identifying the retrieval data as erroneous data based on the marked ECC by bit.

A method of correcting column short errors for partition data read from a memory block of a FLASH memory, comprising:

• a) generating a mask locating one or more bit positions within a word of memory affected by the column short;
• b) masking every word of the partition data to form masked partition data using the mask to store a first value in the bit positions affected by the column short;
• c) validating the masked partition data;
• d) masking every word of the partition data using the mask to store a second value in the bit positions affected by the column short, if the partition data is invalid;
• e) performing a test to determine whether the column short errors to the partition data have been connected;
• and
• f) marking an error connection code (ECC) long bit to indicate that the partition data is available but is in error.