Patent ID: 8773796

Claim:
A method for synchronizing writing in a disk drive, comprising: providing the disk drive with a disk having bit patterned media, and a slider with a read head and a write head for reading data from and writing data to the disk, respectively; positioning the read head at a read-write offset with respect to the write head; writing data with the write head onto a data pattern on a write track of the bit patterned media; providing a timing offset between the data pattern on the write track and a data pattern on a servoing track of the bit patterned media with the read head using the data pattern on the servoing track; storing the timing offset in a plurality of sync fields in a plurality of servo sectors on the servoing track, wherein the sync fields are radially positioned with about half-track offsets in circumferentially alternating servo sectors to accommodate varying read-write offsets; reading back the timing offset stored in the sync fields with the read head; and synchronizing a write signal of the data pattern on the write track with the timing offset read back from the sync fields.