Dynamic variable capacity hard disk drive

A disk drive comprising:

• at least a portion of the disk of a disk drive having an area with a factory set logical block start address and a factory set logical block end address;
• a writing mechanism for writing information to the disk;
• a reading element for reading information from tracks on the disk, and producing a position error signal depicting the distance between the read element and the center of a track on the disk;
• a controller that controls the disk drive, the reading element and the writing mechanism, the controller including a microprocessor that executes instructions to cause the write mechanism to:
• monitor the position error signal to determine when the disk drive is in a stable environment;
• write to a first set of tracks having a first width as written in a factory at the time of manufacture and read the first set of tracks;
• and
• write a second set of tracks having a second width, the second set of tracks rewritten to form tracks narrower than the first width in response to determining a stable environment outside the factory, and read the second set of tracks;
• and
• reset the factory set logical block end address to a higher value in response to reading the second set of tracks.

A method for increasing the data capacity of a disk drive from the factory settings for data capacity comprising:

• determining if the disk drive is in a stable environment where the data capacity of a disk drive could be increased over a factory set value;
• writing data to at least one portion of the disk drive at a higher capacity than the factory set data capacity for the at least one portion of the disk drive, in response to a determination of a stable environment;
• and
• resetting the data capacity for at least one portion of the disk drive to reflect the increase capacity over the factor set data capacity.