An apparatus includes a buffer and a processor. The buffer contains a plurality of commands pending for a data storage medium. The processor is configured to sort the commands in an execution efficiency favorable manner, which reveals a most favorable command for execution, compare a skip count for each of the commands to a threshold count, the skip count corresponding to a number of times execution of the command has been skipped in favor of execution of another command, and execute one of the commands having a skip count that has reached the threshold count over the execution of the most favorable command.