NOVEL TECHNOLOGIES FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE HARD-DISK DRIVES

Since the introduction of magnetoresistive (MR) heads, the areal densi ty of hard disk drives (HDDs) has been increasing at a rate of 60% a y ear, and has now reached 1.4 Gb/sq. in. The data rate has also been in creasing at a rate of 40% or more, and this has recently become a key factor in the ability of multimedia applications to transfer stored da ta rapidly from the HDD to the PC or workstation. Currently, data rate s of around 150 Mb/sec are being implemented in products. In this stud y, key technologies for increasing both the areal density and the data rate of HDDs are proposed. If they are implemented, an areal density of around 10 Gb/sq. in. and a data rate of 200 Mb/sec or more can be a chieved.