Embodiments of the present invention efficiently format long sectors,
without decreasing the performance, in a magnetic disk drive in which
servo sectors are radially formed at regular intervals, and make full use
of the ECC performance that is enhanced by the long sectors. In one
embodiment, a data format in each zone on a magnetic disk is completed by
a plurality of tracks N (N is an integer, which is 2 or more). The
storage capacity per track of the outermost radius zone Z#1 is 150 kB. In
this zone, long sectors each having a length of 32 kB are formatted with
the number of tracks per format N#1=3. The storage capacity per track of
the innermost radius zone Z#m is 80 kB. In this zone, long sectors each
having a length of 32 kB are formatted with the number of tracks per
format N#m=2.