US Patent 8719677 Using ECC encoding to verify an ECC decode operation

A method includes initiating a decoding operation of a first portion of a codeword representation to generate a set of data bits. The first portion includes first parity bits and is associated with a first error correcting code. The method includes initiating an encoding operation of the set of data bits according to a second error correcting code to generate computed parity bits. The method includes comparing the computed parity bits to a second portion of the codeword representation to determine a number of bits that differ between the computed parity bits and the second portion of the codeword representation. The method also includes generating an indication of successful decoding in response to the number of bits that differ being less than a threshold value.