One or more methods and systems are presented for performing gain and timing acquisition of data read from one or more data sectors of a hard disk drive. The gain and timing information may be used to synchronize a read channel receiver of the hard disk drive to the data read from the data sector(s). In a representative embodiment, the one or more methods comprises determining one or more frequency and phase offsets using one or more preambles of one or more data sectors residing in a hard disk drive. In a representative embodiment, the gain of the one or more preambles may be determined. In another representative embodiment, the one or more systems used to determine one or more phase and frequency offsets, and amplitudes, comprise hardware and/or software capable of utilizing a sequence of consecutive samples provided by one or more preambles of one or more data sectors.