The disclosed embodiments are directed to systems, devices, and methods for iterative message-passing decoding. In one embodiment, a method is disclosed comprising decoding a first codeword at a storage device using a detector and a decoder, the first codeword comprising a set of symbols from a first set of codewords; assigning, via the decoding, a set of confidence levels for each symbol in the first codeword; transmitting, by the storage device, the confidence levels to an iterative decoder; generating, by the iterative decoder, a second codeword based on the set of confidence levels, the second codeword excluding at least one symbol in the set of symbols; and iteratively decoding, by the iterative decoder, the second codeword using an erasure decoder; and transmitting, by the iterative decoder, soft information generated by the erasure decoder to the storage device for subsequent decoding by the storage device.