Embodiments of the invention increase the convenience of a magnetic disk
drive for portable use by shortening a period of time required to record
a large amount of data, and by increasing the reproduction time, in the
magnetic disk drive. In one embodiment, an area between servo data parts
is interpolated by servo data parts, each of which stores a burst signal,
so that the allocation density of a burst signal is made k times. At the
time of write operation in which data is written, only the servo data
parts are made use of to perform the servo control while a disk is driven
at high rotational speed so as to reduce the recording time. At the time
of read operation in which data is reproduced, the servo data parts are
made use of to ensure the required precision of the servo control at low
rotational speed that is 1/k of the rotational speed at the time of write
operation. The reproduction at low rotational speed enables the reduction
in power consumption.