Method of operating a disk drive for writing to an addressable location after detecting that a head is within a safe-to-write window

Abstract

A method of operating a disk drive to efficiently recover from an event which interrupts a safe-to-write condition that occurs during a write operation includes receiving a string of data blocks for writing on respective addressable locations on a track of a disk in the disk drive. During a pass of the addressable locations under the read/write head, the head is positioned to follow the track within a tolerance limit and a first write operation is started to write the string of data blocks on the track. During the first write operation, if it is detected that a safe-to-write condition no longer exists, as may be triggered by a shock event, the first write operation is aborted. When it is later determined that the safe-to-write condition is asserted, a second write operation is defined to write a set of addressable locations within the string of data blocks which have yet to pass under the read/write head and the second write operation is performed. By performing the second write operation as soon as possible, the performance of the drive is improved.