In the embodiment of FIGS. 2A and 2B, the first disk surface 18₁ is the top surface of a disk 38 and the second disk surface 18₂ is the bottom surface of the disk 38. The first set of servo sectors 22₁-22_N are written to the top disk surface 18₁ and the second set of servo sectors 24₁-24_N are written to the bottom disk surface 18₂ circumferentially offset from the first set of servo sectors 22₁-22_N. The control circuitry 26 processes the read signals emanating from the heads to demodulate the servo sectors and generate a position error signal (PES) representing an error between the actual position of the head and a target position relative to a target track. A servo control system in the control circuitry 26 filters the PES using a suitable compensation filter to generate a control signal 40 applied to the VCM 20 which rotates an actuator arm 42 about a pivot in order to actuate the head radially over the disk in a direction that reduces the PES. The servo sectors may comprise any suitable head position information, such as a track address for coarse positioning and servo bursts for fine positioning. The servo bursts may comprise any suitable pattern, such as an amplitude based servo pattern or a phase based servo pattern (FIG. 1). In one embodiment, the first set of servo sectors 22₁-22_N and the second set of servo sectors 24₁-24_N are written to the disk surfaces during a servo writing procedure. The servo writing procedure may be executed by an external servo writer wherein the servo written disks are installed into production disk drives, and in another embodiment the servo writing procedure may be executed by the control circuitry 26 of each disk drive (i.e., the servo sectors may be self-servo written).