Patent ID: 7095577

Claim:
A disk drive having drive operating characteristics, the disk drive comprising: (a) a disk; (b) a head actuated radially over the disk; (c) a programmable write driver for applying a write current to the head during write operations; (d) a disk controller for executing a write current optimization procedure by: obtaining an ambient temperature reading; programming the write driver with a first write current setting relating to the ambient temperature reading; writing test data to the disk; reading the test data from the disk and generating a first quality metric; programming the write driver with a second write current setting relating to the ambient temperature reading; writing test data to the disk; reading the test data from the disk and generating a second quality metric; and evaluating the first and second quality metrics to generate an optimized write current setting based on the drive operating characteristics and the ambient temperature reading, wherein the disk controller selects the first write current setting relative to a previously optimized write current setting that corresponds to the ambient temperature reading.