A method, comprising: detecting a defect on a storage medium of a disk drive using a defect detector; determining a counter reset location corresponding to the defect, wherein the counter reset location is a location of a recognizable data boundary on the storage medium and wherein the counter reset location is situated before the location at which the defect was detected, resetting a counter at the counter reset location and beginning counting from the counter reset location, wherein counts of the counter are associated with different locations, within a smallest addressable unit of data, on the storage medium; determining a first count of the counter corresponding to a location of the defect detected by the defect detector; during a subsequent data read operation from the storage medium: resetting the counter at the counter reset location and beginning counting from the counter reset location; if a count of the counter reaches the first count, changing a response of at least one of the defect detector, a read channel controller of the disk drive, and a servo controller of the disk drive; wherein changing the response of the defect detector comprises changing a defect detection sensitivity of the defect detector, or wherein changing the response of the read channel controller comprises causing the read channel controller to enter a defect mode. detecting a defect on a storage medium of a disk drive using a defect detector; determining a counter reset location corresponding to the defect, wherein the counter reset location is a location of a recognizable data boundary on the storage medium and wherein the counter reset location is situated before the location at which the defect was detected, resetting a counter at the counter reset location and beginning counting from the counter reset location, wherein counts of the counter are associated with different locations, within a smallest addressable unit of data, on the storage medium; determining a first count of the counter corresponding to a location of the defect detected by the defect detector; during a subsequent data read operation from the storage medium: resetting the counter at the counter reset location and beginning counting from the counter reset location; if a count of the counter reaches the first count, changing a response of at least one of the defect detector, a read channel controller of the disk drive, and a servo controller of the disk drive; wherein changing the response of the defect detector comprises changing a defect detection sensitivity of the defect detector, or wherein changing the response of the read channel controller comprises causing the read channel controller to enter a defect mode. resetting the counter at the counter reset location and beginning counting from the counter reset location; if a count of the counter reaches the first count, changing a response of at least one of the defect detector, a read channel controller of the disk drive, and a servo controller of the disk drive; wherein changing the response of the defect detector comprises changing a defect detection sensitivity of the defect detector, or wherein changing the response of the read channel controller comprises causing the read channel controller to enter a defect mode.