Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Katsuyoshi Kitagawa

Yuji Sakai

Yoichiro Tanaka

Yoshiaki Sonobe

Kazushi Tanimoto

Takehito Yamada

Hiroyuki Kuno

Makoto Imamura

Yasuo Motegi

Tetsuzo Toya

A disk assembly, which includes a large number of magnetic disks arranged in layers on a disk loading hub, is detachably mounted on a rotating shaft of an air spindle motor that is set on a base. The base has thereon a movable table capable of reciprocation. The movable table carries thereon a rotary positioner for rotating and positioning a stacked head assembly, which is formed of a large number of magnetic heads stacked in layers, and a plurality of ramps for loading into and unloading the magnetic heads from the magnetic disks. The distance between the respective rotating shafts of the air spindle motor and the rotary positioner can be adjusted by moving the movable table.

Servo track writer for magnetic disks

A disk drive is provided which uses a disk having a maximal limit cylinder group formed based on an initially recorded servo data before being assembled in a drive body. A CPU sets an actually usable data recording area on the disk by seeking the head in a radial direction over the disk. Further, the CPU allows the generation of a translation table for obtaining a correspondence between inherent physical cylinder address information of an effective cylinder group contained in the set data recording area and logical cylinder address information set to identify the effective cylinder group and allows the translation table to be stored in a memory. The CPU refers to the translation table when, in response to an access request from a host system, control is made to position a head to a target position, and finds-physical cylinder address information corresponding to the target cylinder.

Disk drive having positioning control system using logical cylinder address information

A disk system has a disk as a recording medium, and a disk recording/reproducing apparatus for recording and reproducing data by a head radially movable provided on a disk by a head moving mechanism, and the disk has a first region formed with a servo sector having servo information along a data track for recording and reproducing data on a disk, second regions having servo sectors having servo information along a servo track and of the number of magnification of integer number of the servo sectors in the first region, and the disk recording/reproducing apparatus has, position detecting section placed on the moving portion of the head moving mechanism for detecting the moving position of a head to output a position signal representing the head position in the radial direction of the disk, memory section for storing 'head follow-up information' for a servo track obtained from the position signal in the state that the head is positioned on the servo track, and section for controlling to follow up the head to the data track by using 'first track follow-up error information' obtained by servo information read from the servo sector immediately after the head is passed over the servo sector in the first region when the head is positioned on the data track, and using 'second track follow-up error information' of a difference between the follow-up information of the head to the data track obtained from the position signal and follow-up information stored in the memory section while the head is passed between servo sectors in the first region.

Magnetic disk apparatus

A magnetic or optical disk apparatus having a flexible disk rotated at high speed and head sliders for reading and writing information on the disk, floating from both sides of the disk. The disk apparatus is also provided with straightening plates for keeping air flow in the radial direction of the disk as a laminar flow to surely prevent the disk from being vibrated at the time when the disk is rotated at high speed. As the result, positions of the head sliders relative to the disk can be surely and accurately maintained to provide heads with excellent recording and reproducing characteristics. Mass storage and high speed access can be thus achieved without damaging the flexible disk and the disk apparatus can be smaller-sized with lighter weight and lower cost.

Growing community of inventors

Akishima, Japan

Katsuyoshi Kitagawa