A disk drive stores overhead information corresponding to multiple servo sectors
within a dedicated data sector in a customer data region of a data storage disk.
The overhead information includes servo data for which the information content
does not depend upon the physical location of the data on the disk surface. During
a data storage operation, the overhead data is read from the dedicated data sector
and stored in a buffer memory within the disk drive. A portion of the overhead
data is then retrieved from the buffer memory for each servo sector subsequently
traversed by the transducer for use in performing a data processing task related
to the servo sector.