until some other condition such as maximum voltage pulses etc kicks in at which time defect management options are invoked terminating the erase operation to that row this procedure is then repeated on all the other rows targeted for erase one row at a time until all rows sectors so targeted are erased in this way all cells in a sector or group of sectors are both sufficiently erased and confined to a targeted tight erase distribution this capability reduces wear under repeated write cycling thereby increasing endurance it is especially useful in speeding up multi state programming operations following erase since now time does not have to be expended in bringing heavily overerased cells up to that sufficiently erased condition the drawback of this embodiment is that erasing becomes much more time consuming replacing potentially one single erase pulse applied to all rows or sectors simultaneously with a series of erase pulse check operations on a row by row basis since now only a single row can be erased at a time this approach is most practical when the time associated with erase is hidden eliminating its impact on write performance today there are a number of ways in which mass storage systems eliminate erase related.