GARBAGE COLLECTION BASED ON QUEUED AND/OR SELECTED WRITE COMMANDS

A non-volatile memory system may include a write task queue that queues write commands and a garbage collection module that analyzes information about pending write commands in the write task queue in order to perform garbage collection. Based on its analysis of the write task queue, the garbage collection module performs discouraging actions to discourage itself from selecting certain blocks in a candidate list to be source blocks for garbage collection. In addition or alternatively, the garbage collection module performs encouraging actions to encourage itself to select blocks storing current valid data associated with a write command as source blocks for garbage collection. Write amplification may be reduced as a result of the discouraging and encouraging actions.