摘要 |
An embodiment of the invention relates to a nonvolatile mass storage device such as a flash memory device formed with erase blocks partitioned into memory management blocks. An erase block is identified containing at least a minimum number of management blocks marked invalid, from which data is copied, merged, and stored in a new management block. The erase block is then erased. Erase blocks containing at least the minimum number of invalid management blocks may be erased until a minimum amount of management blocks is free. Alternatively, all erase blocks containing at least the minimum number of invalid management blocks may be erased. A management table listing the number of invalid management blocks in erase blocks may be included in the mass storage device. Preferably, the new management block for storage of the merged data is located in an erase block different from the identified erase block.
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