Disclosed are, inter alia, methods, apparatus, data structures, computer-readable media, and mechanisms, for use in protecting groups of data words. One embodiment manipulates these data words to generate a resultant data word and an error correction code thereon for use in identifying a position of a bit error, with error detection codes used to identify which data word actually has the bit error. One embodiment retrieves a stored particular data word and its error detection code from memory or other storage. If an error is detected, the other data words in the group corresponding to the error correction code are acquired and are manipulated to produce a new resultant data word. The error correction code and the new resultant data word are used to identify the position of the bit error, with a corresponding bit position corrected in the particular data word.