1. A method for performing a seek operation to move a head from an initial track to a destination track on a rotatable recording surface, comprising: transducing servo data from an intermediary track between the initial track and the destination track as the head sweeps across the recording surface to obtain a detected angular position value for the head with respect to the recording surface; declaring an unsafe condition when the detected angular position value differs from a predicted angular position value for the head; and performing an index qualification routine after the head reaches the destination track to verify accuracy of the predicted angular position value.