A method, apparatus and program storage device for updating a non-volatile memory in an embedded system is provided. The invention includes detaching the non-volatile memory from all expectable non-volatile memory references, creating a temporary, volatile-memory file system for allocation of volatile memory space as needed for the non-volatile memory update process, copying all procedural code required to perform the non-volatile memory update into the volatile memory, changing the system search path definitions temporarily to point to the volatile memory, and performing the non-volatile memory update.