A disk drive is disclosed including a rotatable disk having a user area including a first sector, and a spare area including a second sector, and configured to store a relocation list. The disk drive also includes a controller configured to receive a write command to write first data to the first sector, determine that the first data includes an amount of data less than a storage capacity of the first sector, read second data in the first sector, determine that there is a read error when reading the second data in the first sector, temporarily relocate the first sector to the second sector, maintain the second data in the first sector, and perform a test on the first sector to determine whether to copy the first data to the first sector, or permanently relocate the first sector to the second sector.