System and method of managing data in a non-volatile memory having a staging sub-drive

A system and method is disclosed for managing data in a non-volatile memory. The system may include a non-volatile memory having multiple non-volatile memory sub-drives, including a staging sub-drive to receive all data from a host and a plurality of other sub-drives each associated with a respective data temperature range. A controller of the memory system is configured to route all incoming host data only to the staging sub-drive and during garbage collection each individual piece of valid data from a selected source block in a selected source sub-drive is routed to a respective one of the sub-drives. The method may include only routing host data to the staging sub-drive and only relocating valid data to sub-drives other than the staging sub-drive based on a determined temperature of valid data and a unique temperature range associated with sub-drives other than the staging sub-drive in the non-volatile memory system.