A disk drive is disclosed comprising a head actuated over a disk comprising a plurality of data sectors. A redundancy generator is loaded with a first seed value corresponding to system data generated internal to the disk drive. First data path redundancy symbols are generated in response to the first seed value, and the system data and the first data path redundancy symbols are written to a first data sector. A syndrome generator is loaded with the first seed value to generate first syndromes when reading the system data and first data path redundancy symbols from the first data sector. The validity of the system data is verified in response to the first syndromes.