Self-writing of servo patterns in disk drives

A self-servo writing disk drive, comprising:

• (a) a reference disk including a printed reference pattern transferred by magnetic printing onto a storage surface of the reference disk, wherein the printed reference pattern includes embedded servo information providing servo timing and transducer head position information;
• (b) a spindle motor for rotating at least the reference disk;
• (c) a synchronous sampling data detection circuit including:
• (i) a digital sampler for synchronously sampling analog readback signals magnetically induced to a transducer head from flux transitions present in the reference pattern, at a sampling rate to produce digital samples representing a sampled signal waveform;
• (ii) a data detection channel configured for receiving the digital samples and processing the sampled signal waveform spectrum to generate recovered samples representing the embedded servo information;
• and
• (iii) a control loop circuit for extracting servo timing and position information from the recovered samples and using said extracted information to precisely position and maintain the data transducers at concentric track locations of disk storage surfaces, and self-writing disk drive servo patterns onto the storage surfaces at the concentric track locations with the data transducers in accordance with disk drive servo pattern features.

A synchronous sampling data detection circuit for a disk drive including at least a transducer head, a reference disk having a printed reference pattern transferred by magnetic printing onto a storage surface of the reference disk, wherein the printed reference pattern includes embedded servo information providing servo timing and transducer head position information, a spindle motor for rotating at least the reference disk, the data detection circuit comprising:

• (i) a digital sampler for synchronously sampling analog readback signals magnetically induced to a transducer head from flux transitions present in the reference pattern, at a sampling rate to produce digital samples representing a sampled signal waveform;
• (ii) a data detection channel configured for receiving the digital samples and processing the sampled signal waveform spectrum to generate recovered samples representing the embedded servo information;
• and
• (iii) a control loop circuit for extracting servo timing and position information from the recovered samples and using said extracted information to precisely position and maintain the data transducers at concentric track locations of disk storage surfaces, and self-writing disk drive servo patterns onto the storage surfaces at the concentric track locations with the data transducers in accordance with disk drive servo pattern features.