A disk drive is disclosed which receives a plurality of access commands from a host, where each access command identifies a target track. The access commands are stored in a command queue, and for each command in the command queue, a seek length is computed corresponding to a number of tracks between a current track the head is over and the target track of the access command. A seek time is computed in response to the seek length using a seek profile comprising a first plurality of seek length segments and a variance group comprising a second plurality of seek length segments. Each seek length segment corresponds to a range of seek lengths, and the first plurality of seek length segments is different than the second plurality of seek length segments.