Method and apparatus for optimizing the read/write channel error recovery process in a disc drive. An error recovery table comprising a plurality of sequentially ordered corrective operations is provided so that, upon receipt of an error from the disc drive read/write channel, the corrective operations are sequentially performed in an attempt to correct the error. At such time that a selected one of the corrective operations results in the correction of the error, the table is reordered so that the selected one of the corrective operations is advanced in the table sequence, and the reordered table is used upon the occurrence of the next error. Additionally, a series of free retries is performed prior to the operation of the error recovery table.