Abstract: Technology is disclosed herein for detecting leaky word lines in a non-volatile storage system. The exact leaky word line may be located very rapidly using a divide and conquer approach. First a determination may be made whether at least one word line in a group such as any of the word lines in a block is leaky. This initial determination can be made very quickly. If no word line in the group is leaky, the search can end. However, responsive to a determination that at least one word line in the group is leaky, a divide and conquer search may be performed in which the group of the word lines is repeatedly divided into smaller sub-groups with selected smaller sub-groups tested for a short circuit until the leaky word line is located.

Abstract: Technology is disclosed herein for detecting leaky word lines in a non-volatile storage system. The exact leaky word line may be located very rapidly using a divide and conquer approach. First a determination may be made whether at least one word line in a group such as any of the word lines in a block is leaky. This initial determination can be made very quickly. If no word line in the group is leaky, the search can end. However, responsive to a determination that at least one word line in the group is leaky, a divide and conquer search may be performed in which the group of the word lines is repeatedly divided into smaller sub-groups with selected smaller sub-groups tested for a short circuit until the leaky word line is located.