The present invention provides, at a lower cost, a highly reliable data reading method and data reading apparatus that can improve backward sequential reading performance. The disk drive is provided with a magnetic disk and a control section having an HDC, a RAM, an MPU controlling the operation of the entire HDD, including control of the HDC, a ROM, and an I/F for connecting to an external host device. The control section executes a backward reading detection step that detects backward reading, a step of receiving a command that reads a block of a first length from a first LBA, a step that reads a block of the first length from the first LBA when backward reading is detected, and a step that pre-fetches a second block from a second LBA smaller than the first LBA; when backward reading is detected, upon completion of the reading of data from the disk, the reading of data predicted to be requested by the next command begins immediately.