Patent ID: 8689082

Claim:
A method of operating a memory controller, the method comprising: reading data from a first block of a memory device; detecting degraded pages from a plurality of pages of the first block and counting a number of the degraded pages in the first block, the degraded pages containing data having a programmed state distribution changed by charge loss; performing a recharging operation when the counted number of the degraded pages is greater than a first reference value and less than or equal to a second reference value, the second reference value being greater than the first reference value; and performing a reclaiming operation when the counted number of the degraded pages is greater than the second reference value, wherein the recharging operation includes reprogramming error corrected bits of the data into a page of the first block having the same address as a page from which the data was read, the reclaiming operation includes reprogramming error corrected bits of the data into a second block, the first block having a different physical address than the second block, and the first block and the second block are in a same memory array of the memory device.