A disk drive to condense a defect scan log for a disk is disclosed. The disk drive comprises: a disk including a plurality of tracks having a plurality of wedges; a head to perform read operations from the disk including reading defects on the disk; and a processor. The processor controls operations in the disk drive including: determining a plurality of defect zones, wherein each defect zone includes a plurality of physical locations on the disk; detecting defects on the disk; recording the defects into the defect scan log as log entries, wherein the log entries comprise a location parameter related to the defect location on the disk; determining that the number of defects detected in a first defect zone exceed a first threshold; and combining the log entries of the first defect zone into a coalesced log entry.