The present invention has been made to obtain a magnetic disk apparatus and the like capable of using a patrol region in the magnetic disk to detect a location in need of maintenance in hardware equipment around the magnetic disk in a separate manner from the disk itself and thereby avoiding useless replacement and operating the magnetic disk apparatus at low cost. In a preventive maintenance detection for a magnetic disk apparatus having a patrol function that uses a patrol region in the magnetic disk to determine the presence/absence of the need of preventive maintenance, a data pattern for detecting crosstalk in hardware equipment around the disk is generated, a write command or read command corresponding to the generated data pattern is executed, and the crosstalk is determined/detected based on the command execution result.