High performance, high capacity micro-winchester disk drive

Abstract

A micro-Winchester disk drive subsystem includes a data block sequencer, cache memory and interface for a host computing machine. The drive includes a base and a plurality of non-removable directly rotated disks forming data storage surfaces. A balanced rotary head transducer actuator is mounted to the base for a plurality of data transducer heads among a multiplicity of concentric data tracks formed on each data storage surface of each of the disks. The track following servo system includes a position encoder coupled between the actuator structure and the base, prerecorded data track centerline information at a radially outermost region and at a radially innermost region of each data surface, and a temperature sensor for sensing temperature of the base at the vicinity of the position encoder. An actuator driver circuit is connected to supply electrical driving current to the actuator structure; and, a single, time divided multi-tasked digital including an analog to digital converter is connected to receive the position information from the position encoder, centerline information from the disk surfaces read by the data transducer and temperature sensed by the temperature sensor during a calibration operation in one phase of its operational cycle, and other phase being devoted to supervision data block handling functions of disk drive data block sequencer cache memory and interface. During track following operations, centerline information is derived from information obtained in the calibrate operation. The temperature sensor is periodically checked and recalibration is carried out when drive temperature changes.