A disk drive has a recording head slidably coupled to a rail and in magnetic communication with a disk surface. The recording head has an optical power interface and an optical data interface. An optical transceiver is fixably mounted proximate an end of the rail and optically coupled to the optical power interface and/or the optical data interface of the recording head. The coupling between the optical transceiver and the interfaces facilitates writing data to the disk surface and/or reading data from the disk surface via the recording head.