After the read head of a composite head reads sector data from a disk, a read circuit detects a sync mark in the sector data. The read circuit demodulates user data subsequent to the detected sync mark, and outputs it to a disk controller. A sequencer incorporated in the disk controller measures, as a read preamble data length, the data length of preamble data preceding to the detected sync mark. The sequencer determines the head gap length of the composite head from the data length of the preamble data of sector data to be written to the disk, a write path delay, the read preamble data length and a read path delay.