Abstract: According to one embodiment of the present invention, a method of counteracting gas ingestion in a hydrodynamic bearing of a spindle motor in a data storage device comprises waiting for activity of a host connected with the data storage device to become idle. When the activity of the host becomes idle, a determination is made whether to release gas from a fluid of the hydrodynamic bearing of the spindle motor. Responsive to determining to release gas from a fluid of the hydrodynamic bearing of the spindle motor a motor spin down routine for the spindle motor is performed.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for mirroring user data on a single hard drive. Each block of user data is written to the rotating disk or platter of the hard drive at two locations. Those two locations are on at least different surfaces of at least one platter of the hard drive system, and are also at starting locations 180° out of phase from each other. In this way, the loss of data at one of the locations on the rotating disk or platter may not be a catastrophic loss as the data block is also written on a different surface starting at a different location. In this way, user data is protected from loss caused by physical damage, mobile particulates within the sealed volume of the hard drive, and other write problems such as high fly writes.