Patent ID: 6973604

Claim:
A method for allocating sparing resources in a magnetoresistive solid-state storage device having magnetoresistive storage cells arranged in a plurality of arrays, comprising the steps of: identifying cells or groups of cells amongst the magnetoresistive storage cells that are affected by physical failures; forming a first count representing sparing resources in each of the plurality of arrays required to reduce the effects of the identified physical failures; defining a plurality of cross-array sets, each cross-array set comprising a portion from each of a subset of the plurality of arrays, and forming a second count representing an effect of physical failures for each of the plurality of cross-array sets; determining a cross-array set that is worst affected by failures, with reference to the second count; determining an array of that cross-array set that is least affected by failures, with reference to the first count; and allocating a sparing resource in the determined array, with respect to the determined cross-array set.