Method of controlling movement of a transducer and disk drive using same

Abstract

A method and apparatus for controlling movement of a transducer to limit its stopping time at a certain position of a disk regardless of whether the disk drive performs a read/write operation, an etching or clustering effect of a lube layer coated on the disk is prevented, thereby preventing performance degradation of the disk drive. The method including (a) determining whether the transducer is located in a data zone of a disk at a predetermined period of time; (b) if the transducer is located in the data zone of the disk based on the result of step (a), determining whether a command accompanied by a disk access is executed; and (c) if the command accompanied by a disk access is executed based on the result of operation (b), waiting until the execution of the command accompanied by the disk access is finished and moving the transducer to a new track determined according to a predetermined algorithm, and if the command accompanied by a disk access is not executed based on the result of operation (b), immediately moving the transducer to a new track determined according to the predetermined algorithm.