Patent ID: 8824249

Claim:
A method comprising: driving a light source of a data recording head at a first power level to irradiate a first sector on a track defined on an adjacent storage medium, the first power level insufficient to alter a magnetization state of the first sector; transitioning the light source to a higher, second power level to irradiate a second sector on the track during the writing of data to said second sector using a magnetic transducer of the data recording head, the second power level sufficient to facilitate an altering of said magnetization state of the medium by the magnetic transducer, wherein the first and second sectors are irradiated at the respective first and second power levels during a single rotation of the medium; and providing a plurality of data recording head/storage medium combinations, wherein the second power level of the transitioning step is individually optimized for each said head/medium combination, and the first power level of the driving step is a common, non-zero power level for each head/media combination.