Provided are a method, system, and article of manufacture to process communications between a host and storage drive having a storage media. An Input/Output (I/O) request is received from the host directed to the storage media that requires requested information be sent to the storage drive to use to execute the I/O request against the storage media. A message is sent to the host to cause the host to modify I/O timeout operations in response to determining that the requested information is required.