Maxtor Corporation

Steven E Stupp

Steven E Lambert

Timothy A Riener

Hai Chi Nguy

Nelson Cheng

Bill Edward Higgins

Richard Blanco

A method and apparatus for determining a lifetime for a medium to fail due to thermal decay of a magnetization pattern is provided. Different stress magnetic fields are applied to a write head for writing to a machine-readable medium resulting in a magnetic field on the medium. A time to failure, corresponding to each of the different stress magnetic fields, is determined, the time to failure being an amount of time for an amplitude of a signal on the medium to degrade beyond a predetermined failure criteria. A time to failure without a stress magnetic field is determined based on the corresponding times to failure determined for each of the different stress currents.

Method for determining lifetime for media thermal decay

A technique for determining the recording medium temperature, thereby enabling high track density in Hybrid recording. This allows compensation for changes in the ambient temperature and variations in the laser power over its life. Such a temperature measuring technique also enables laser power shaping of the spot size/thermal contour in the medium, providing smaller spot size definition with a given optical system. Baseline modulation is a sensitive probe of the temperature gradient between a magneto-resistive read element (anisotropic or giant) and the surface of a disk. By calibrating the temperature rise (above ambient) of the read element, this technique can be used to determine the disk surface temperature.

Method and apparatus for measuring the surface temperature of a disk

A suspension assembly for supporting a read/write head/slider assembly adjacent to a rotating storage disk with dynamically adjustable flying height for use within a hard disk drive is provided. The suspension assembly includes a generally elongated loadbeam that has a baseplate defined at a first end thereof and a gimbaled flexure portion defined at a second end thereof. The flexure portion includes a pair of flexure legs and a flexure tongue. The pair of flexure legs extend from the flexure tongue and each leg attaches to an opposite side of the loadbeam. The flexure tongue generally provides a mounting surface for the read/write head/slider assembly. Strips of thermal-expansion material are attached to the flexure portion. These strips are connected to a power source via a power conductor. When the strips are energized, they expand and deform a portion of the flexure portion. This deformation of the flexure portion is transposed to the read/write head/slider assembly for dynamically adjusting the flying height thereof.

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Steven E Stupp