Patent ID: 7003626

Claim:
A method for selecting format specific parameters in a disk drive comprising a control system and a plurality of disk surfaces each having a surface format for storing data, wherein at least one surface format is different than other surface formats and wherein the control system comprises a microcontroller having a microcontroller execution memory, the method comprising: initializing the disk drive for operation; receiving a data transfer command; selecting a disk surface for performing data transfer operations based on the received data transfer command; generating a format specific data structure corresponding to the selected disk surface; storing the format specific data structure at a predetermined address in the microcontroller execution memory; and executing instructions for performing the data transfer operations using the microcontroller, wherein the instructions are executed using the stored format specific data structure; wherein the selected disk surface comprises a plurality of wedges and a plurality of zones traversing the wedges, each zone having at least one track having a plurality of sectors and at least one split-sector, wherein the generated data structure corresponds to a selected zone.