System and method for handling commands in an optical disc drive

An optical disc drive waits to receive a command to perform a function on optical media in the disc drive. The optical media includes a pitted premastered area that cannot be overwritten and a grooved user-writeable area that can be overwritten. Once a command is received, one portion of the disc drive processes the command while another portion of the disc drive monitors the processing of the command and waits until the command is processed. If an error condition is detected while processing the command, the disc drive generates an event request such as a notify event request, a focus event request, a spin event request, and a tracking event request. When an event issues, the disc drive interrupts processing of the command and attempts to recover from the error condition. The state of the disc drive when the requested event was received is saved before attempting to recover from the error condition. If the recovery attempt is successful, the saved state of the disc drive is restored, and the interrupted command continues to be processed at the point where the interruption occurred. A command finished event is issued when the command is complete. If the recovery attempt was not successful, the interrupted command is replaced with a servo abort command to terminate the interrupted command.