Provided are techniques for destaging pinned retryable data in cache. A ranks scan structure is created with an indicator for each rank of multiple ranks that indicates whether pinned retryable data in a cache for that rank is destageable. A cache directory is partitioned into chunks, wherein each of the chunks includes one or more tracks from the cache. A number of tasks are determined for the scan of the cache. The number of tasks are executed to scan the cache to destage pinned retryable data that is indicated as ready to be destaged by the ranks scan structure, wherein each of the tasks selects an unprocessed chunk of the cache directory for processing until the chunks of the cache directory have been processed.