Patent ID: 8887032

Claim:
A system for reading data from a data storage device, the system comprising: a channel detector configured to detect bits of digital data corresponding to the data read from the storage device, and for each of the bits of digital data, determine a probability value, wherein the probability value indicates a probability that each of the bits is a 0 or a 1; a decoder module configured to generate confidence indicators associated with a first subset of the digital data, wherein the confidence indicators include at least one of: the probability value received from the channel detector; and bit flip data, wherein the bit flip data indicates a number of times each of the bits in the first subset of the digital data was flipped during decoding; and a digital defect detection module configured to i) receive the confidence indicators from the decoder module, and ii) selectively identify the first subset of the digital data as defective based on the confidence indicators received from the decoder module.