Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Other

Maxtor Corporation

Andrew A Lucas

Brian Lee Rappel

Curtis S German

Lance R Carlson

John R Gustafson

Charles C Partee

Scott Edward Watson

Dana C Fisher

H Ross Chessman

Lionel Young

Described herein is a balance plug for a disk drive. The balance plug includes a body defining a substantially spherical outer surface and a plurality of ribs along the spherical outer surface and defining at least three meridians along the outer surface of the sphere. The at least three meridians can reside in at least two transverse planes.

Disk drive with a spherical balance plug

A disk drive includes an enclosure that has a breather port therethrough. A first labyrinth path may be disposed inside the disk drive enclosure, in fluid connection with the breather port. A second labyrinth path may be temporarily disposed outside the disk drive enclosure, in fluid connection with the breather port. An alternative gas such as helium may be allowed to bleed out through the second labyrinth path during a period of servo track writing. The second labyrinth path may be removed after servo track writing.

Disk drive with added external labyrinth path during servo track writing

A hard disk drive, its use and production are described. A read/write disk stores digital data. A spindle motor supports the read/write disk for controlled rotation thereof. A head arrangement moves to selectively access the read/write disk in a data access mode and moves to a parked position. A dedicated input is receives a first sensor related input signal. A processing arrangement executes the data access mode by cooperatively controlling the spindle motor and the head arrangement, monitoring the sensor related input signal for a predetermined characteristic thereof, and responsive to detection of the characteristic, at least moves the head arrangement to the parked position. A hard disk drive multi-sensor group, monitoring technique and interface are described.

Hard disk drive with external sensor interface, system for use thereof and method

A disk drive with load beam damping is disclosed. Multiple disks are provided on a spindle for storage of information thereon. A rigid actuator arm block is disposed radially beyond a perimeter of these disks. Flexible load beams with read/write heads thereon extend from the actuator arm block into the space between adjacently disposed disks to read/write information from/to these disks. At least one damper is disposed between each of the load beam pairs to reduce load beam vibrations for the disk drive. Preferably these dampers also serve to further structurally interconnect the noted load beam pairs. Load beam damping may also be provided for those load beams which provide access to the extreme read/write surfaces of the disk stack, as well as for disk drives which utilize a single disk.

Disk drive with viscoelastic damper disposed between adjacent load beams

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Lyons, CO, United States of America

Andrew A Lucas