Patent ID: 7450436

Claim:
A method for purging a flash storage device comprising a plurality of flash storage units, wherein each flash storage unit of the plurality of flash storage units comprises a plurality of flash storage blocks, the plurality of flash storage blocks comprising at least one data block and at least one control block, the method comprising: receiving a first command; erasing the at least one data block in each flash storage unit of the plurality of flash storage units; erasing the at least one control block in each flash storage unit of the plurality of flash storage units; initializing the at least one data block in each flash storage unit of the plurality of flash storage units after erasing the at least one data block in the flash storage unit; initializing the at least one control block in each flash storage unit of the plurality of flash storage units after erasing the at least one control block in the flash storage unit; determining a status for each flash storage block of the plurality of flash storage blocks in each flash storage unit; and storing the status of each flash storage block of the plurality of flash storage blocks of each flash storage unit.