An NVM controller measures cell damage for wear leveling in an NVM, thus improving performance, reliability, lifetime, and/or cost of a storage sub-system, such as an SSD. In a first aspect, the controller determines that an error reading a page of NVM was caused by cell damage and/or cell leakage. The controller reprograms and immediately reads back the page, detecting that the error was caused by cell damage if an error is detected during the immediate read. In a second aspect, the cell damage is tracked by updating cell damage counters for pages and/or blocks of NVM. In a third aspect, wear leveling is performed based at least in part upon measured cell damage for pages and/or blocks of NVM.