Abstract: Storage media defect areas that are too large to be managed by ECC processing alone and sufficiently small that read/write head clock synchronization can be maintained over the defect area, are managed by a fill pattern recording scheme in which an offset register indicates the beginning of a defect area and a fill pattern is recorded over the defect area while ECC processing is halted. Data recording is resumed after the defect area is passed. In this way, the number of times sector skipping must be used for a storage media is reduced, thereby making more efficient use of the storage media surface area.