A magnetic recording hard disk drive (HDD) uses adaptive braking of the voice coil motor (VCM) actuator upon unexpected loss of power during a track seek. An adaptive braking controller applies a preselected value of brake voltage to the VCM to reverse the motion of the freely-moving actuator. The value of the selected brake voltage is determined from the actuator velocity. A set of brake voltage values is stored in memory in the HDD, and each brake voltage value corresponds to a band of track seek lengths, with each band representing a range of actuator velocities. For each seek, the value of brake voltage corresponding to the band in which the seek length falls is stored in a register. If emergency power-off (EPO) occurs during the seek, the value of brake voltage is recalled from the register and applied to the VCM to brake the VCM. After the VCM has been adaptively braked in this manner, actuator retract occurs to unload the heads.