Methods and structures for writing thermal lead-in sequences to provide head stability in a dynamically mapped storage device. In a dynamically mapped storage device in which all user supplied logical blocks are dynamically mapped by the storage device controller to physical disk blocks, features and aspects hereof provide writing thermal lead-in sequences to allow the write head to stabilize. As the write head begins writing a sequence of data to the recordable media, the write head may not have a desired thermal stability. Thus, there may be thermal flux with some of the data, affecting the reliability of the data. Mapping features and aspects hereof allow the write head to write a thermal lead-in sequence of data that does not destroy valuable data, allowing the write head to begin writing before stabilizing. Writing the thermal lead-in sequence will cause the write head to warm up and become stable, and thus be ready to write valid data.