Patent ID: 7433241

Claim:
A method performed as part of programming non-volatile storage, comprising: pre-charging a group of unselected non-volatile storage elements prior to applying a program signal to a particular non-volatile storage element of said group, said group includes a first set of one or more non-volatile storage elements on a drain side of said group with respect to said particular non-volatile storage element and a second set of two or more non-volatile storage elements, said first set has been subjected to partial programming, said pre-charging includes applying one or more first pre-charge enable signals to said first set of one or more non-volatile storage elements and applying one or more second pre-charge enable signals to said second set of two or more non-volatile storage elements, said one or more first pre-charge enable signals are at higher voltages than said one or more second pre-charge enable signals; and applying said program signal to said particular non-volatile storage element after pre-charging said group of unselected non-volatile storage elements.