One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for reducing the latency associated with media protection notification for serial interface mass storage devices, such as serial AT attachment (SATA) hard disk drives. A new link layer primitive, referred to as hold-emergency (HOLDE), incorporates the flow-control behavior of the existing HOLD command, with the additional new action of notifying the hard disk drive to take emergency steps to prepare for impact. The HOLDE link layer primitive operates in conjunction with the existing hold-acknowledge (HOLDA) primitive and is semantically similar to the existing HOLD primitive. The HOLDE mechanism is preferably implemented directly in hardware in the SATA link layer state machines within the host and the hard disk drive.