US Patent 7319567 Servo sector in magnetic disk drive

Embodiments of the invention lower the servo sector's share of each track and ensure that servo sector numbers are reliably determined. According to the embodiment, in the servo sector number (SSA) section of each servo sector, servo sector number information whose bit length (k bits) is shorter than the bit length required to express the servo sector number itself is preliminarily written. The servo sector number of each servo sector is determined by using the servo sector number information in m successive servo sectors, that is, a total of m×k bits of information. Note that they satisfy the m(2m×k−1)≦N relation where N denotes the total number of servo sectors per track.