diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index 43ce10eea58..9aec98fd0b2 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1727,6 +1727,9 @@ Release 2.8.0 - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-9761. Rebalancer sleeps too long between iterations
     (Mingliang Liu via cnauroth)
 
+    HDFS-9713. DataXceiver#copyBlock should return if block is pinned.
+    (umamahesh)
+
 Release 2.7.3 - UNRELEASED
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/DataXceiver.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/DataXceiver.java
index 83ebb504bc4..cb5bb71d11e 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/DataXceiver.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/server/datanode/DataXceiver.java
@@ -995,6 +995,7 @@ public void copyBlock(final ExtendedBlock block,
           "to " + peer.getRemoteAddressString() + " because it's pinned ";
       LOG.info(msg);
       sendResponse(ERROR, msg);
+      return;
     }
     
     if (!dataXceiverServer.balanceThrottler.acquire()) { // not able to start