A hard disk drive comprising a plurality of read/write heads oriented to serially read data from the magnetic media of the disk drive. The head output signals are delayed and combined to provide a time aligned composite signal for determining the value of the data bits read from the disk drive. An improved signal-to-noise ratio is provided according to the teachings of the present invention by combining the signal components from the plurality of heads, as the signal components are added algebraically while the noise components are combined as root mean square values. Thus the overall signal-to-noise ratio is improved, resulting in a greater probability of correctly determining the stored data.