A transaction log for flash recovery includes a chained sequence of blocks specifying the operations that have been performed, such as a write to a sector or an erase to a block. Checkpoints are performed writing the entire flash state to flash. Once a checkpoint is performed, all of the log entries prior to the checkpoint are deleted and the log processing on recovery begins with the latest checkpoint. If the system is able to safely shutdown, then a checkpoint may be performed before the driver unloads, and on initialization, the entire persisted flash state may be loaded into the flash memory with a minimal amount of flash scanning. If a power failure occurs during system operation, then on the next boot-up, only the sectors or blocks specified in the log entries after the latest checkpoint have to be scanned, rather than all the sectors on the part.