Data quality pre-selection in read retry operations

Abstract

Implementations disclosed herein provide a method comprising iteratively reading data from a failing media sector prior to a an error minimization operation, analyzing read data at each iteration using an error minimization operation to determine sections of read data as good data, storing the good data in a buffer during each iteration, and using the good data as input for the read data during a subsequent error retry operation. In another implementation, the method further comprises comparing new read data with stored good data in the buffer, and replacing the stored good data with the new read data if the new read data has a higher quality than the stored good data.