High data rate recording at over 60 mbytes per second

High data rate recording is dependent on the speed of the write driver elec tronics and the intrinsic head response, The relationship between head resp onse and head design is studied by finite element modeling. The primary par ameters studied are head yoke length, head geometry, and number of coil tur ns. The head designs are tested using an experimental write driver with a 0 .9 ns 10-90% risetime, The risetime of the driver is varied from 0.9 to 3.0 ns by adding capacitance at its output. The parametric and BER performance of three different head designs reveal a strong dependence of maximum data rate capability on the head efficiency and response. The best design showe d low BER performance for writing to data rates slightly above 60 MB/s whil e reading at 15 MB/s with a PRML channel using a (0,4,4) run-length-limited code.