Systems, methods, non-transitory computer-readable media to perform operations associated with the storage medium. One system includes a storage medium and an encoding/decoding (ED) system to perform operations associated with the storage medium, the ED system being configured to process a set of log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) and a syndrome vector to obtain a set of confidence values for each bit of a codeword, estimate an error vector based on selecting one or more bit locations with confidence values from the set of confidence values above threshold value and applying hard decision decoding to the selected one or more bit locations, calculate a sum LLR score for the estimated error vector, and output a decoded codeword based on the estimated error vector and the sum LLR score.