One example disclosed in the application is an electronic data-storage device comprising one or more arrays of memory elements. The data-storage device also includes an error-control-coding encoder that encodes received data and a READ/WRITE controller that writes encoded data received from the error-control-coding encoder to a number of memory elements by applying the switching-inducing force or gradient to the one or more arrays of memory elements until more than a maximum-allowed number of WRITE requests have been queued to the WRITE-request buffer, until feedback signals indicate that the WRITE operation has completed, or until the switching-inducing force or gradient has been applied for a maximum application time.