Consideration of adjacent track interference and wide area adjacent track erasure during block allocation

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide a system, method, and program product for allocating a block of physical storage space on a write surface of a hard disk drive. A computer system maintains a write count for each block on the hard disk drive. After receiving an allocation request, the computer system identifies one or more candidate blocks of storage space on the hard disk drive that can be selected to fulfill the allocation request. The computer system determines an estimated write count and identifies one or more allocated blocks whose write counts are within a specified number of write operations of the estimated write count. The computer system selects a candidate block based, at least in part, on physical proximity of the candidate block to one or more of the allocated blocks whose write counts are within a specified number of write operations of the estimated write count.