A disk drive employs a method of operating a spindle motor to respond to a spin-down command to reduce the time required for spinning down and subsequently spinning up the spindle motor. The disk drive is connectable to a power supply having a fixed DC voltage. The spindle motor includes a stator having a plurality of windings and a rotor rotatable at a variable spin-rate. The rotor has an angular position relative to the stator. The disk drive includes switching elements coupled to the fixed DC voltage and the plurality of windings. The switching elements are controlled to sequentially apply the fixed DC voltage across a selected combination of the windings to generate a negative torque on the rotor such that a controlled braking operation is performed to decelerate the rotor to a selected spin-rate .omega.1. After the variable spin-rate is reduced to the selected spin-rate .omega.1, the switching elements are controlled to apply the fixed DC voltage across at least one of the windings such that a controlled rotor-stopping operation is performed to control the angular position of the rotor when the rotor comes to a stop at the end of the controlled rotor-stopping operation.