Abstract: An information handling system, such as a disc drive, includes a base, a disc stack rotatably attached to the base, and an actuator assembly movably attached to the base. Attached to one end of the actuator assembly is one or more transducers. The disc includes data areas and servo areas written at angular locations on the disc. The disc drive also has a disc drive controller which includes a motor speed controller, a write gate controller, and a device for predicting the disc speed at an upcoming servo and disabling the write gate if the predicted disc speed is outside a selected range of disc speeds. The device for predicting the disc speed may further include an abort signal generator that produces an inhibit write gate signal in response to the predicted disc speed being outside the selected range of disc speeds.

Abstract: An apparatus and method are disclosed for optimizing write performance of a disc drive through the use of write thresholds that are adaptive by head and by disc location. The disc drive has a head which is controllably positionable adjacent each of a plurality of nominally concentric tracks defined on a rotatable disc, which selectively magnetizes the tracks to write data to the tracks. A servo circuit of the disc drive controls the position of the head and prevents the head from writing data to the tracks until the head is positioned within write thresholds which are separately defined for each of the tracks. The write thresholds for each of the tracks are stored in memory and accessed by a digital signal processor of the servo circuit at the commencement of each write operation by the disc drive.

Abstract: A method is disclosed for optimizing write performance of a disc drive through the selection of optimum write thresholds. The disc drive has a controllably positionable head adjacent tracks defined on a recording surface of a rotatable disc. A narrow head detection test is first applied whereby data are written to a selected track while maintaining the head at a first off-track center distance. The data are read while maintaining the head at a position nominally over the center of the selected track and measuring resulting read error performance. These steps are then repeated using a second off-track center distance.