Forward corrupted track detection and by-pass for shingled magnetic recording drives

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage drive configured for incorporation into a data center or data cloud environment;
• and
• a controller to:
• detect a read operation failure of a read operation associated with a sector of a target track of a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) disk drive;
• determine whether the sector of the target track is within a track skew range, the first sector being within the track skew range indicating the first sector is affected by track skew;
• determine whether the sector of the target track is a first sector of the target track;
• and
• upon determining the sector of the target track is within the track skew range, sample at least one of a sector of a track adjacent to the target track at a same wedge of the sector of the target track, a sector of a track adjacent to the target track at a same wedge of the target track where a forward corruption area starts, or one or more sectors sampled when the sector of the target track is the first sector of the target track, or any combination thereof.

A method comprising:

• detecting a read operation failure of a read operation associated with a sector of a target track of a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) disk drive;
• determining whether the sector of the target track is within a track skew range;
• determining whether the sector of the target track is a first sector of the target track;
• and
• upon determining the sector of the target track is within the track skew range, sampling at least one of a sector of a track adjacent to the target track at a same wedge of the sector of the target track, or a sector of a track adjacent to the target track at a same wedge of the target track where a forward corruption area starts, or any combination thereof.