Vertical track zoning for disk drives

A data storage device has multiple storage media surfaces and corresponding heads, each storage media surface includes multiple regions, and each head is for recording on and playback of information from a corresponding storage media surface. A method of defining a storage format for the storage media surfaces includes reading data from each region on each storage media surface with the corresponding head, measuring a record/playback performance of each head for each region on each corresponding storage media surface based on the data read from the regions, and selecting a track density for each region on each storage media surface based on the measured record/playback performance of the corresponding head for the region.