An information recording and reproducing method and apparatus with increased recording density of an information recording medium using the sample servo method driven with a fixed angular velocity from the innermost circumference to the outmost circumference. A disk-shaped recording medium is concentrically divided into a plurality of areas. Recording is performed with a recording density suited for the radial position of each of the areas. The width of the areas is set so that the recording capacity of a user data section sandwiched between servo sections forming a segment may increase with every transition to an outer adjacent area while taking one byte as a unit. The recording and reproducing apparatus has a clock generating circuit for servo data extraction and a clock generating circuit for user data extraction. The latter clock generating circuit is synchronized by a synchronizing pulse generated by the former clock generating circuit.