A system and method for correcting errors in an ECC block using soft-decision data. In an embodiment, a soft-decision ECC decoding method, uses “soft” data indicative of how reliable bits of data are when read out. Such a method may use an update module for receiving and manipulating the soft-decision data and iteratively change bits or groups of bits based upon an ordering of the reliability factors. Then a calculator module may determine the total number of errors still remaining after each iteration. Determining just the total number of errors instead of the actual locations is far less computationally intensive, and therefore, many combination of potential flip-bit combination may be analyzed quickly to determine if any combination might reduce the total number of errors enough to be handled by the conventional hard-decision ECC decoding method.