Patent ID: 7436610

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: (a) a plurality of disk surfaces, wherein: each disk surface comprises a plurality of data tracks; each data track comprises a plurality of data sectors; the data tracks of each disk surface are banded together into a plurality of physical zones each having physical zone boundaries at predetermined radial locations on the disk surface, wherein each physical zone is operable to store data in the data sectors at a predetermined data rate; and a first physical zone on a first disk surface has a physical zone boundary at a first predetermined radial location, wherein the first predetermined radial location is different from any of the radial locations of the physical zone boundaries on a second disk surface; and (b) control circuitry operable to: identify a plurality of logical zones, wherein at least one logical zone has logical zone boundaries defined relative to the physical zone boundaries of at least the first and second disk surfaces, and the number of logical zones is greater than the number of physical zones for at least one of the disk surfaces; and use the logical zones to find one of the data sectors corresponding to a block address received from a host.