Aspects of a storage device are provided which use flow control to prevent stalling during processing of read requests for a large read command. A controller of the storage device receives a read command for data from a host device, stores in a queue read requests for a portion of the data, and reads the portion of the data from a memory based on the read requests. The controller may store other read requests in the queue for other portions of the data when a number of read requests in the queue does not meet a threshold. Otherwise, the controller refrains from storing other read requests in the queue for other portions of the data when the number of read requests in the queue meets the threshold. The controller may operate similarly with subsequent sequential commands, but may continue to store read requests in the queue for subsequent random commands.