Sector validation for use in ECC engine validation

A disc drive comprising:

• a disc having a plurality of physical sectors;
• and
• an error correction code(ECC) engine operable to detect a bad physical sector, the ECC engine having an ECC calculating module, an appending module, and a write decision module, wherein the write decision module determines whether to disable a calculating function and an appending function by bypassing the ECC calculating module and the appending module.

An error correction code engine validation system for a data storage device comprising:

• a host computer attached to the data storage device having a read/write channel including an error correction code engine, wherein the error correction code engine includes an error correction code correction function and an error correction code detection function;
• a validation means in the disc drive for validating the error correction code engine, wherein the validation means utilizes read, read long, and write long commands to identify a valid sector to be used for validation and then disables error correction code correction function.