Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Kosuke Nagase

Qing Dai

Sukumar Rajauria

Yuichi Aoki

Kiyoshi Hashimoto

Yukio Kato

Erhard Theodor Schreck

Tan Duy Trinh

Huaming Xu

The present disclosure relates to pretreating a magnetic recording head to increase the lifetime of the magnetic media drive. A transparent smear is purposefully formed on the magnetic recording head to ensure the magnetic recording head does not overheat and lead to a short drive lifetime. The transparent smear is formed from material found in the magnetic media. The transparent smear is formed by pretreating the magnetic recording head with the transparent material from the magnetic media. The pretreating occurs without writing any data to the magnetic media. Once the transparent smear is in place, writing may occur. The magnetic recording head can be retreated at a later time should the transparent smear degrade. Furthermore, if an optically absorbing smear develop, it can be removed and a new transparent smear may be formed.

In-situ NFT pre-treatment to accumulate optically transparent material on NFT to improve reliability

The present disclosure relates to a magnetic recording medium for a magnetic media drive. Absorbing smears can develop on magnetic recording heads during operation. The absorbing smears lead to shortened drive lifetime. Transparent smears, on the other hand, do not have as deleterious of an impact on drive lifetime as compared to absorbing smears. By doping the medium with a dopant that can lead to development of transparent smears, the formation of absorbing smears can be reduced or even eliminated, which leads to a longer drive lifetime. The dopant can be disposed in the capping layer of the medium or in the absorbing overcoat layer. The dopant will migrate through the medium to the top surface of the medium during operation. From the top surface of the medium, the dopant will deposit on the magnetic head and form a transparent smear.

HAMR media to assist optically transparent build-up on NFT to improve reliability

A heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) hard disk drive has a gas-bearing slider supporting a near-field transducer (NFT) and a NFT temperature sensor (NTS). An optional first IVC circuitry may provide a bias voltage to the slider body to assure substantially zero electrical potential between the slider body and the disk to minimize slider-disk contact and lubrication pick-up. A second IVC circuitry operates independently of the first IVC circuitry and provides a negative bias voltage to the NTS (and the connected NFT) relative to the disk to minimize the adverse effects of excessive heating on the NFT.

Heat-assisted magnetic recording device capable of providing negative electrical potential at NFT

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa-ken, Japan

Kosuke Nagase