A method of writing product servo sectors on a disk of a disk drive is disclosed. The disk comprises a reference pattern having a plurality of sync marks written around the disk. The sync marks are detected to generate a sync mark detect signal, and a timing recovery measurement is generated in response to the sync mark detect signal. A frequency control signal is generated in response to the timing recovery measurement, and a servo write clock is generated in response to the frequency control signal. A feed-forward compensation value is generated in response to the timing recovery measurement and the frequency control signal, and the timing recovery measurement is adjusted in response to the feed-forward compensation value to compensate for a repeatable phase error in the timing recovery measurement. The servo write clock and the head internal to the disk drive are used to write the product servo sectors to the disk.