Embodiments of the present invention help to increase the capacity and the
reliability of a disk drive device to improve the manufacturing yield
thereof. An embodiment of the present invention sets a data track pitch
for each head slider (recording surface) in accordance with head
characteristics. This method for specifying the data track pitch is based
on the distance between erase band ends (EBEs) of the both adjacent data
tracks. The erase band of a data track is a band defined as the area
where the already written data are erased in writing the data track. The
distance between the erase band ends of the both adjacent data tracks
corresponds to the width SW of the area which is not erased by the
adjacent data tracks. Specifying the data track pitch based on this leads
to increase in the data capacity of each recording surface and secure
prevention of occurrence of a squeeze error.