In at least one embodiment, a controller of a non-volatile memory array determines, for each of a plurality of regions of physical memory in the memory array, an associated health grade among a plurality of health grades and records the associated health grade. The controller also establishes a mapping between access heat and the plurality of health grades. In response to a write request specifying an address, the controller selects a region of physical memory to service the write request from a pool of available regions of physical memory based on an access heat of the address and the mapping and writes data specified by the write request to the selected region of physical memory.