Patent ID: 7551390

Claim:
A disk drive to characterize servo wedges that are misaligned, the disk drive comprising: a head connected to a distal end of an actuator arm, the actuator arm rotatable about a pivot to move the head radially over the disk; a disk having a plurality of tracks, a substantial majority of the tracks including a plurality of servo wedges spaced sequentially around a circumference of the track for use in track following; and a servo controller to characterize misaligned servo wedges by implementing operations including: commanding the head to track follow on a track; measuring wedge to wedge time (WTWT) values corresponding to time intervals between identified servo wedges; calculating wedge to wedge time (WTWT) variations for the measured WTWT values; and characterizing the calculated WTWT variations, wherein characterizing the calculated WTWT variations for the track includes utilizing a WTWT variation modeling function to model the WTWT variations.