Positive laser bias electrical control architecture for dark laser heating in heat assisted magnetic recording

Abstract

Various illustrative aspects are directed to a data storage device comprising a disk, a read/write head configured to read data from and write data to the disk, a laser diode (LD) coupled to a near field transducer (NFT) configured to heat an area of the disk near the read/write head, an asymmetric LD driver configured to drive the LD, and one or more processing devices configured to: preheat the LD to a target temperature, wherein the preheating comprises: generating at least one bias pulse conforming to one or more tunable parameters, based at least in part on the target temperature; and applying, using the asymmetric LD driver, the at least one bias pulse to the LD such that no optical response is produced by the LD; and initiate a write operation for writing data to the disk.