Disk drive increasing capacity by adjusting a servo gate during write operations

A disk drive is disclosed comprising a disk comprising a plurality of servo tracks defined by servo sectors. The disk drive further comprises a head comprising a read element offset linearly from a write element by a gap such that when the disk rotates, the read element reaches a servo sector before the write element. During a first operation, a first length of a beginning of the servo sector is read, and during a write operation, a second length of the beginning of the servo sector shorter than the first length is read to enable data to be written while the read element is over at least part of the servo sector.