Comment by userbinator

High-density NAND flash also needs "whitening", i.e. scrambling the data to be stored so that the number of 1s and 0s is even and randomly distributed, to avoid wearing some cells (the ones that are storing 0s) more than others, as well as reduce pattern-dependent disturb errors.

That said, digital storage media has been somewhat pattern-sensitive for a century or more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card