The present invention presents techniques whereby a memory
system interrupts a
programming process and restarts it including additional data. More specifically, when a memory
system programs data into a group of cells together as
programming unit,
programming can begin with less than the
full data content which the group can hold. In one embodiment, the present invention allows overlapped programming of upper and lower data pages, where once the memory begins programming the lower logical
data page, if data is received for the upper page assigned to the same physical page, programming is interrupted and recommenced with the concurrent programming of both the upper and the loser pages. In a complimentary embodiment, when a page contains multiple sectors of data, programming of the physical page can begin when one or more, but less than all, of the sectors forming the corresponding logical page have been received, stopped and restarted to include additional sectors of the page.