Methods and devices for recovering data stored in a non-volatile storage device are provided. Data may be recovered for memory cells associated with a word line that cannot be read using ECC that was calculated based on the data stored on that word line. This allows recovery for situations such as a word line shorting to the substrate or two adjacent word lines shorting together. When programming memory cells associated with a group of word lines, parity bits may be calculated and stored in memory cells associated with an additional word line in the memory device. When reading memory cells associated with one of the word lines in the group, an otherwise unrecoverable error may occur. By knowing which word line is defective, its data may be recovered using the parity bits and the data of all of the other word lines in the group.