Patent ID: 8773807

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: a disk comprising a plurality of servo tracks including: a plurality of normal servo tracks each comprising a plurality of normal servo sectors comprising head position information; and a first fly height calibration servo track comprising fly height calibration servo sectors, each fly height calibration servo sector comprising head position information and a spacing pattern, wherein the normal servo sectors do not comprise the spacing pattern; a head actuated over the disk; a dynamic fly height (DFH) actuator operable to control a fly height of the head over the disk; and control circuitry operable to execute a startup operation by: positioning the head over the first fly height calibration servo track; servoing the head over the first fly height calibration servo track in response to the fly height calibration servo sectors; calibrating a DFH setting for the DFH actuator in response to the spacing pattern in the fly height calibration servo sectors; after calibrating the DFH setting, seek to a data track defined by at least one of the normal servo tracks; and reading startup data from the data track.