Abstract

A completely automated apparatus for disk certification which has a very high volume production per unit area of square footage required. Volumes of 108 million disks per year require only 1200 square feet of facility, about 3% of the space required for the prior art certification systems. The apparatus uses standard unmodified disk drives and is completely integrated with a conveyor and pickup system for automatic loading and unloading of diskettes. A method of sequencing operations on a disk is disclosed whereby all tracks of disk are written to provide a first test signal. Then all tracks are read after all tracks are written to provide a first read signal. Calculations are performed on the first read signal to obtain a calculated signal and the calculated signal is compared with a known standard. By writing an entire disk before reading the entire disk, rather than writing and reading on a track by track basis, operations on several disk drives can be sequenced to be performed simultaneously while using the same measurement electronics as would be required for one drive.