A method and architecture for mitigating memory imprinting in electronic system volatile memory. At system power-up, a bus mode register control determines whether to operate the current power cycle in normal mode or inversion mode, with an objective of equal amounts of time in each mode over the system's lifecycle. A bi-directional data bus inverter is positioned between a system processor and volatile memory. When the system is running in inversion mode, data from non-volatile memory is inverted (0's and 1's are swapped) when copied to volatile memory, and the data bus inverter rectifies all data bits flowing in/out of the processor. By balancing the time spent by individual memory addresses in high and low voltage states, the system minimizes differences in memory cell stresses, thus reducing memory imprinting effects. The same concept applied to other architectures, such as internal processor cache memory, and FPGA configuration memory, is also disclosed.