Seagate Technology Incorporated

Charles E Skeldon

Monty Aaron Forehand

Paul William Burnett

William C Little

Krishna Rameshwara Malakapalli

Donald B Douglas

Florence F Kung

Jimmie R Shaver, Jr

An apparatus and method are disclosed for recovering from a header error condition in a disc drive of the type having a rotatable disc having a plurality of concentric tracks with data fields for the storage and retrieval of data and header fields providing logical address information for the data fields. The header fields include read and write header fields which are used during read and write operations, respectively, to align read and write elements of the head with the data fields. When the disc drive unsuccessfully decodes the logical address information from a selected header field associated with a selected data block, an alternate header error recovery routine is performed wherein attempts are made to decode the logical address information from the alternate header field associated with the selected data block. Radial offsets can further be applied to the head to enhance the decoding of the logical address information from the alternate header field.

Error recovery using alternate headers in a disc drive

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Clearwater, MN, United States of America

Charles E Skeldon