Methods and apparatuses for enhanced protection of data stored in a FLASH memory system involve a controller capable of protecting data using different size page stripes. The controller is configured to store data in FLASH memory devices in the form of page stripes, each page stripe comprising a plurality of pages of information, each page of information being stored in a different FLASH memory chip. The controller stores the data in a manner such that the pages making up each page stripe includes a plurality of data pages and at least one data protection page. In one implementation, the page stripes stored by the controller include a first page stripe having N data pages and one data protection page, and a second page stripe having M data pages and one data protection page, where N is an integer greater than three and M is an integer less than N.