The hard disk drive manufacturing method of the present invention includes an initial determination of the orientation of the individual hard disks during the various processing steps and disk drive assembly steps. Specifically, the orientation of the hard disks in the assembled disk drive is ascertained, such that the direction of arcuate writing paths on the disk surface is known. Additionally, the orientation of non-random arcuate micro-scratches that appear on the disk surface during disk processing is ascertained. Where the arcuate path of the micro-scratches corresponds to the arcuate writing paths on a disk surface, the disk process is altered to effectively reorient the disk in its mounting in the hard disk drive. The result of the process alteration is that there is no longer a correspondence between the arcuate path of the micro-scratches and the arcuate written data paths, and a significant reduction in the number of defects on the surface of the hard disk is obtained.