Patent ID: 6888897

Claim:
A storage system for storing data on a storage medium, comprising: an encoder to encode data; a linear block encoder to encode data encoded by said encoder; a write circuit to write an output of said linear block encoder to the storage medium; a read circuit to read data from the storage medium; a soft channel decoder to decode data; a soft linear block code decoder to decode data decoded by said soft channel decoder, wherein in a first iteration, said soft channel decoder decodes the data read by said read circuit, wherein in a succeeding iteration, said soft channel decoder decodes the data read by said read circuit and utilizes information decoded by said soft linear block decoder from an immediately preceding iteration; a threshold check circuit to select an output of said soft linear block code decoder if a number of parity-check violations is less than a threshold, or an output of said soft channel decoder if a number of violations is greater than the threshold; and a decoder to decode an output of said threshold check circuit.