Abstract: A system, method, and program product for operating a disk drive motor according to an exponentially decaying commutation curve are disclosed. A disk drive includes a motor, a spindle driven by the motor, one or more rotatable storage media coupled to the spindle, a motor driver circuit coupled to the motor, and a disk drive controller coupled to the motor driver and other disk drive components. The various components of the disk drive are controlled during operation by signals generated by the disk drive system controller. In particular, the disk drive controller can provide commutation timing signals to the motor driver that, in turn, drives the motor. During the first part of motor start-up, the disk drive controller selects external commutation of the motor. Commutation values approximating the first portion of the ideal commutation curve are pre-defined and stored as a look-up table into a memory system.