Abstract: A system for hard disk drives that prevents the host from receiving an unrecoverable error whilst reading an erroneous track or sector resulting from a sudden power failure, i.e. from an unexpected power removal. The system has to behave in real-time, therefore a known lengthy error recovery procedure is not acceptable. According to the invention the solution saves the status information, and possibly the data, of the hard disk drive system in a non-volatile memory. Thus the status information, and possibly data, is still available when the system is restarted. The non-volatile memory might be a magnetic (MRAM), a battery-backed static (SRAM) or a Ferro-electric random access memory (FeRAM). The invention is especially used for audio/video hard disk drive systems such as personal video recorders (PVR) or set-top boxes with storage capabilities. The embodiment which has the data stored in a non-volatile memory improves the data reliability of the system and can thus also be used for PC applications.