Seagate Technology Incorporated

Iraj Jabari

Ramgopal Battu

Sanjoy Ghose

The invention is a miniature disc drive system. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, a positioner for positioning a transducer includes an actuator arm having the transducer mounted at one end and a voice coil motor (VCM) mounted at the other end. A pivot is centrally located along the actuator arm, whereby the VCM, when activated, can rotate the transducer over a disc or discs having approximately 45 mm diameters. The VCM is preferably a moving voice coil-type having a voice coil attached to the actuator arm and two magnets positioned above and below the voice coil such that the voice coil can freely move between them. One magnet is mounted to a base portion of a housing which encloses the entire disc drive system. The other magnet is mounted to roof portion of the housing. Thus, the housing is integrated into the active components of the disc drive and permits a significant size reduction to be achieved. Alternatively, a moving magnet VCM can be used, whereby two voice coils are mounted, one each to the roof and the base of the housing, respectively. A permanent magnet is attached to the actuator arm and moves freely between the voice coils. Selective activation of the voice coils rotates the actuator arm and positions the transducer over a desired track of the disc. The housing for both the preferred and alternative embodiments is approximately 50 mm.times.70 mm.times.19 mm and each embodiment is capable of storing 10 MB or more of data.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Iraj Jabari