Patent ID: 8060691

Claim:
A method for communicating with a serial interconnection of a plurality of memory devices interconnected in-series, the serial interconnection including at least first and second memory devices, each of the first and second memory devices having a store element and memory cells and being associated with a unique address in the serial interconnection, the method comprising: loading data stored in a data storage to the store elements of the first and second memory devices of the serial interconnection; instructing the first memory device to program the data loaded in its store element into its memory cells; determining whether the data is successfully programmed into the memory cells of the first memory device, if not successfully programmed, a failure determination being provided; recovering the data from the store element of the second memory device in response to the failure determination, the recovering comprising reading back the data from the store element of the second memory device without programming the loaded data into the memory cells of the second memory device; storing the read back data in the data storage; loading the read back and stored data to the store elements of the first and second memory devices of the serial interconnection; and freeing up space in the data storage where the read back data is stored before loading the data in the store elements of the first and second memory devices.