Patent ID: 6105104
Filing Date: 2000-08-15
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
A method of operating a disk drive having a controllable head stack assembly including a plurality of heads and having a plurality of disk surfaces, each disk surface having a total number of tracks, the method causing an optimized transfer of a sequence of logical data blocks between the tracks and the heads, the method comprising:a) a multiple step operation to cause the head stack assembly to perform a sequence of alternating a plurality of track seeks and head switches in which each head switch is preceded by an optimized number of track seeks on a single disk surface so that one head at a time defines a respective part of a serpentine accessing path defined over a selected group of the tracks on said single disk surface, said optimized number of track seeks being a submultiple of said total number of tracks on said single disk surface, said submultiple being empirically selected given a fixed time to perform a single track seek, a fixed time required for multiple track seeks, a fixed time required for head seeks and said data transfer rate; andb) transferring the logical data blocks between the heads and the selected group of tracks during the multiple step operation.