[Yaffs] YAFFS and HW ECC

I have a question regarding HW ECC and YAFFS.

If a hardware ECC implementation automatically updates ECC bytes in the spare area yet those bytes conflict with the tags that YAFFS places in the spare area, it seems like I'm out-of-luck as far as utilizing HW ECC.

Am I really out of luck or can minor modifications be made to the YAFFS usage of the spare area to avoid the conflict thus allowing me to use the hardware's automatic ECC capabilities?

Thanks for any advice.
Nathan