Method of managing the endurance of non-volatile memories

Method of managing the endurance of a data storage system provided with a set of sectors associated with a native endurance capacity (G), comprising steps for:

• partitioning said data storage system into a plurality of working sectors and into a plurality of spare sectors capable of forming an endurance reservoir, some of the working sectors being intended to be replaced by spare sectors when said working sectors are bad after a number of programming and/or erase cycles;
• defining a non-volatile memory management zone to find a location of replacement sectors assigned to bad working sectors;
• determining, sector by sector, if a current working sector is physically bad, and performing a step to replace this working sector by a spare sector, only when said current working sector is declared as being physically bad;
• wherein
• an automatic read of an erase quality of memory points in the current working sector is made and is compared with a margin read criterion (Margin Vref.), which is greater than a normal criterion (Normal Vref.), to measure the wear of the current working sector,
• a perfectly generic memory with a regular structure is used if there is no physical difference between an original sector and a spare sector;
• the number of spare sectors is determined by an end user as a function of target endurance needs;
• and
• a working sector replaced by a spare sector itself becomes a working sector that is replaced when it has reached its physical wear threshold.