Maxtor Corporation

William O'Sullivan

Robert David Freeman

Harold T Wright

A head loading mechanism for a disk drive. When power to the disk drive is disconnected, an actuating spring is released. Movement of the spring causes a plunger to contact a bracket on the actuator arm, moving the actuator arm over a parking zone. Further movement of the spring causes blades to lift read/write heads mounted on the actuator arm away from disk surfaces. When power is restored, a motor compresses the spring and returns the plunger and the blades to their original positions.

Disk drive head lift mechanism

A thermally independent dedicated servo disk drive where the temperature is kept within an acceptable range and temperature gradients that can cause differential thermal expansion are eliminated to minimize off tracking due to differential thermal expansion of thermally sensitive components. A novel isolated 'box within a box' architecture is utilized to provide a thermal buffer to external temperature gradients and an inner HDA support structure is coupled to an outer housing with thermally insulative isolators which prevent the conductive transfer of heat from external sources where the outer housing and isolators create a thermal buffer to shield the inner HDA support structure from external heat sources. In addition, certain heat generating components not integrated into the symmetrical thermal 'box within a box' design are isolated where possible. Thus, a thermally symmetrical environment is provided in the area of thermally sensitive components that could otherwise degrade tracking during temperature transients.

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Milpitas, CA, United States of America

William O'Sullivan