Patent ID: 7440208

Claim:
In a magnetic recording and playback system that includes a data channel, a head and a recording media, wherein the channel includes a data detector that detects a series of digital samples, the digital samples are a function of a partial response (PR) target and data stored on the media, and the head reads from and writes to the media, a method of improving the channel performance, comprising: selecting, dynamically by PR target selector circuitry, at least one flexible PR target from multiple PR targets having arbitrary coefficients, the flexible PR target selected based on one or more selection criteria, wherein the detector uses the selected flexible PR target to detect data stored on the media; and adjusting, dynamically by detector optimizer circuitry, at least one channel feature based on the selected flexible PR target; wherein the channel is not hard-coded for the PR targets, and the channel is not hard-coded for the channel feature.