Method for following data tracks in a disc drive using an improved thermal calibration method

A method for following data tracks on data surfaces of a disc drive by organizing the data tracks in concentric cylinders including servo tracks on a dedicated servo surface and following servo tracks with a servo transducer that is offset from the servo track to align selected data transducers with the data tracks. To measure the offset for each data surface, a calibration correction track is written to one data surface while a track on the servo surface is followed and the correction track is read by a thermal calibration circuit while following the servo track with an offset to obtain a calibration correction indicative of electronic offsets in the thermal calibration circuit. A pre-written thermal calibration track on each data surface is subsequently read while following a servo track in the same cylinder as the calibration tracks to determine, for each data surface, offsets from the servo tracks which, when adjusted with the calibration correction, will result in data track following by the data transducers. During reading and writing to a data track on a data surface, the data track is followed without offset by following the servo track in the same cylinder as the data track with the corrected offset.