Patent 7454670 was granted and assigned to Samsung on November, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A data management apparatus and method used in a system using one or more flash memories, which can deal with defective blocks in each of the flash memories using different methods depending on how the system manages data stored in each of the flash memories. The data management apparatus includes a device driver, which controls the operation of one or more flash memories, and a controller, which transfers data stored in a defective block of one of the flash memories to a predetermined block in the flash memory.