The present invention is related to a method and apparatus for ECC (error code correction). The method of ECC includes a first directional first decoding, a first directional second decoding, a second directional first decoding, a second directional second decoding, wherein the error tolerant ability of first directional second decoding is greater than that of the first directional first decoding, and the error tolerant ability of second directional second decoding is greater than that of the second directional first decoding. The ECC method includes the following steps: read a data to be decoded; and if there exists at least one solution cannot be efficiently solved after continuous executing the first directional first decoding and the second directional second decoding, and execute the decoding action in the ECC decoding of the present invention according to a predetermined flow control rule, if there exists no correction performed during the ECC decoding and switch to the other directional decoding, the un-modified value is added by one; and if the un-modified value reached a maximum un-modified value, an ECC failure is confirmed and then stop the ECC decoding.