Patent ID: 7076604

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: (a) a disk comprising a plurality of tracks, wherein each track comprising a plurality of data sectors and each data sector for storing a data block; (b) a head actuated radially over the disk; (c) a read/write channel for interfacing with the disk through the head; (d) a disk command data structure comprising a write verify counter and a pointer to a plurality of data blocks to be written to a corresponding plurality of target data sectors; and (e) a microprocessor for executing a write command associated with the disk command data structure by: initializing the write verify counter in the disk command data structure; executing the write command using the disk command data structure by writing the data blocks to the plurality of target data sectors; and using the disk command data structure to perform a write verify operation after executing the write command to verify recoverability of each of the target data sectors, wherein if the write verify operation fails for at least one of the target data sectors: updating the write verify counter in the disk command data structure; if the write verify counter exceeds a threshold, using the disk command data structure to relocate a data block stored in the at least one of the target data sectors to a spare data sector, resetting the write verify counter, and then executing the write verify operation for the remaining target data sectors of the write command; if the write verify counter does not exceed the threshold, re-executing the write command and the write verify operation using the updated disk command data structure; and if the at least one of the target data sectors passes the re-executed write verify operation, resetting the write verify counter, and then executing the write verify operation for the remaining target data sectors of the write command.