A magnetoresistive solid-state storage device (MRAM) employs error correction coding (ECC) to form ECC encoded stored data. ECC encoded data is read and decoded to identify failed symbols. A failure history table is then updated to indicate columns 14 of an array of storage cells 16 which are suspected to be affected by physical failures. Advantageously, erasure information is formed with reference to the failure history table, and the ability of a decoder 22 to perform ECC decoding is substantially enhanced.