Abstract: A method and system for self-servo writing a disk drive by transferring a servo reference pattern by magnetic printing onto at least one storage surface of a reference disk, wherein a resulting printed reference pattern includes embedded servo information providing servo timing and transducer head position information; assembling the disk drive including the steps of installing at least said disk into the disk drive and enclosing said disk and the data transducers within a housing sealed against particulate contamination from an eternal ambient environment; reading the printed reference pattern from said disk via at least one transducer head to generate a readback signal; sampling the readback signal at a sampling rate to generate a sampled signal; processing the sampled signal waveform specturm to generate a recovered signal including the embedded servo information and a fundamental frequency of the sampled signal; using the servo information from the recovered signal to precisely position and maintain the d

Abstract: A method reducing data format overhead in a storage device. A sequence detector includes a series of states and a path memory of predetermined length. This method includes steps of writing a predetermined shortened pad pattern at the end of a user data field pattern to a signal-degrading storage medium such as magnetic tape or disk; generating samples during read back of the user data field pattern and the shortened pattern; and, controlling the sequence detector during receipt of pad samples to converge at only one or several predetermined detector states during a convergence sequence. The convergence sequence, and the detector pad are shorter than a sequence needed to traverse the entire length of the path memory. The final state reached during the sequence can be used to provide an accurate estimate of a last user data bit of the user data field pattern.