Patent ID: 7852596

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: a disk comprising a plurality of tracks, wherein each track comprises a plurality of data sectors; a head actuated over the disk; and control circuitry operable to: receive a read command from a host to read data from a target data sector; determine whether the target data sector has been written in response to a write command received from the host; and when the target data sector has not been written in response to the write command, return dummy data to the host, wherein: when the target data sector has been written in response to the write command, the control circuitry is further operable to return an error message to the host when the target data sector is unrecoverable; and when the target data sector has not been written in response to the write command, the control circuitry is further operable to return the dummy data to the host when the target data sector is unrecoverable.