Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Martin J Smallen

Ciuter Chang

Jih-Ping Peng

Ming-Ching Tang

An air bearing slider for use in a disk drive that includes a rotatable magnetic disk. The slider includes a leading side and a trailing side. The slider further includes a pressurized pad including a pressurized pad air bearing surface. The pressurized pad is disposed between the leading and trailing sides. The slider further includes a contact pad disposed adjacent the trailing side and including a contact surface for sliding contact with the magnetic disk during operation of the disk drive. The contact pad includes a transducer disposed within the contact pad for reading and writing data from and to the magnetic disk. The slider further includes a depressed region disposed between the pressurized pad and the contact pad for mitigating air pressure adjacent the contact surface relative to air pressure adjacent the pressurized pad air bearing surface during operation of the disk drive.

Air bearing slider including a depressed region extending from a main support structure between a pressurized pad support base and a contact pad support base

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Martin J Smallen