The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for performing best head detection in a disk drive using reference tracks. In one embodiment, a disk drive includes a plurality of disk surfaces. Each disk surface has a read head and a write head associated therewith. A servo track writer is provided for moving each write head and each read head relative to their corresponding disk surfaces. Reference tracks are written onto each of the disk surfaces. The reference track from each disk surface is read by its corresponding read head to determine a best read head. In one embodiment, the servo track writer sweeps each read head across its corresponding reference track as the reference track is being read. In one embodiment, each reference track includes reference track patterns and the best read head is the read head that detects the most patterns.