A system and a method for restoring damaged data programmed on a memory, such as a Flash memory, including detecting a failure of a memory controller to successfully decode encoded data using a first decoding algorithm, performing soft sampling of the encoded data to provide soft samples of the encoded data, applying, for example, by a computer coupled to the memory controller, a second decoding algorithm on the soft samples of the encoded data. The second decoding algorithm may have an error correction capability exceeding an error correction capability of the first decoding algorithm.