Approaches are presented for adaptively re-compacting data when errors are found during a post-write verify in a non-volatile memory system, such as flash NAND memory. In one example, user data along with corresponding parity data is written into a block of non-volatile memory. After writing in the user data, but prior to writing the corresponding parity data, the user data is checked. For any word lines that fail this post-write verify, the parity data for the block is adjusted to remove the contribution of any failed word lines before this modified parity data is written into the block. The data corresponding to the failed word lines can then be written elsewhere in the memory system.