provided are a method , system , and article of manufacture for error checking addressable blocks in storage . addressable blocks of data are stored in a storage in stripes , wherein each stripe includes a plurality of data blocks for one of the addressable blocks and at least one checksum block including checksum data for the addressable block . a write request is received to modify data in one of the addressable blocks . the write and updating the checksum are performed in the stripe having the modified addressable block . an indication is made to perform an error checking operation on the stripe for the modified addressable block in response to the write request , wherein the error checking operation reads the data blocks and the checksum in the stripe to determine if the checksum data is accurate . an error handling operation is initiated in response to determining that the checksum data is not accurate .