Patent ID: 7310272

Claim:
A non-volatile storage system, comprising: a group of connected non-volatile storage elements; and a managing circuit in communication with said group of connected non-volatile storage elements, said managing circuit applies a particular voltage to a particular non-volatile storage element of said group, while applying said particular voltage said managing circuit applies a first voltage to a first set of one or more non-volatile storage elements of said group and a second voltage to a second set of one or more non-volatile storage elements of said group, said first set of one or more non-volatile storage elements are on a first side of said particular non-volatile storage element and have already been subjected to one or more programming processes since a last erase of said group, said second set of one or more non-volatile storage elements are on a second side of said particular non-volatile storage element and have not already been subjected to a programming processes since said last erase of said group, while applying said particular voltage said managing circuit applies a voltage that is different than said second voltage to a neighbor non-volatile storage element of said group, said neighbor non-volatile storage element is next to said particular non-volatile storage element on said second side of said particular non-volatile storage element, said neighbor of said particular non-volatile storage element has not been subjected to programming since erasing said group, said managing circuit verifies programming of said particular non-volatile storage element based on said particular voltage.