Patent ID: 7032127

Claim:
A method for locating defective areas of a disk included as part of a hard disk drive, comprising: determining a number of detected defects per unit area of said disk; comparing said number of detected defects per unit area of said disk to a threshold amount; generating a flag if said number of defects per unit area of said disk is greater than said threshold amount; receiving a first indication that a portion of said disk contains a defect, wherein said step of determining a number of defects per unit area of said disk comprises, in response to receiving said first indication, incrementing a value i held by a counter by a value n, wherein said value i represents said number of detected defects per unit area of said disk, and wherein n is the amount by which i is incremented when said indication that a portion of said disk contains a defect is received; and decrementing said value i held by said counter by a first amount s 1 , wherein said step of decrementing is completed prior to receiving a second indication that a portion of said disk contains a defect, and wherein s 1 is a rate of decay of said value i when said value i is greater than a first amount.