Patent ID: 8694754

Claim:
A NAND flash-based mass storage device, the storage device comprising: a substrate; at least two NAND flash memory components on the substrate, the memory components defining a NAND flash memory space organized into blocks and pages, each block having a block information record storing the number of program and erase cycles of the block; a NAND flash controller including a flash translation layer, the flash translation layer translating logical block addresses into physical block addresses; and an interface that interfaces the storage device with a host system through a system interface; wherein the storage device sends the block information record of at least some blocks to the host, the host stores the block information record of the program and erase cycles in a content addressable memory, the content addressable memory associates the logical address of the block with the number of program and erase cycles and the flash translation layer translating the logical address to a physical block address, and, on writing data to the storage device, the host selects a number of program and erase cycles to obtain a logical block address from the content addressable memory the file translation layer translating the logical address into a physical address of a block to which the data are written.