Method and apparatus for error detection

The present invention is an error detection and correction scheme that enables the use of Horner's algorithm for the computation of EDC syndromes from the computed error pattern. Specifically, "transformed" EDC syndromes are computed during the read back of data and parity from the medium. The transformed syndromes are values of the polynomial whose coefficients occur in reverse order from that of the EDC codeword polynomial. In essence, by reversing the order of the coefficients, the Chien search processes the terms in descending order which is the right direction for Horner evaluation.