A system and method of establishing write timing in a disk drive using bit patterned media and a magnetic head with read-write offset in which servoing and writing occur on different tracks with timing offsets. Initially, the distance between the servoing and writing tracks is determined for each track/head position in accordance with head geometry and skew angle. The relative timing errors are then measured by iteratively writing data at timing offset increments to determine the optimal timing offset for the servoing/writing track pair, and then writing the offset to sync fields on the servoing tracks of the disk.