An embodiment of an electronic apparatus may include one or more substrates, and logic coupled to the one or more substrates, the logic to control access to a persistent storage media based on a block and sub-block access structure, store a data structure in the persistent storage media to track read fails at a sub-block granularity for a word-line for every block, and update the data structure in response to a read fail on a block to indicate a failed sub-block that corresponds to the read fail for a word-line for the block. Other embodiments are disclosed and claimed.