A method and means within a hierarchical, demand/response DASD subsystem of the passive fault management type in which, upon the occurrence of fault, error, or erasure, a long device busy signal of finite duration is provided to a host CPU. Any DASD storage device subject to the anomaly is isolated from any host inquiry during this interval. These measures permit retry or other recovery procedures to be implemented transparent to the host and the executing application. This avoids premature declarations of faults, errors, or erasures and consequent host application aborts and other catastrophic measures. If the detected anomaly is not resolved within the allotted time, then other data recovery procedures can be invoked including device reset, the status reported to the host, and the next request processed.