FUTURE HEAD/MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN RIGID DISK DRIVES

Magnetic recording is still considered to be a.leader in storage industries in general. The rigid disk drive, in particular, has an advantage over tape, optical, magneto-optical, or flash memories, because of high areal density and fast access time with reasonably low cost per Mbyte. However, to be competitive in the market and to keep an edge over other storage devices, head and media in rigid disk drives require better performance per cost and more aggressive improvement in areal density, as shown in Fig. 1, than before. In this review paper, the future trend in head/media technologies of the rigid disk drive has been reviewed. Thin film media and thin film inductive/MR heads will be mainly discussed, since they are expected to be dominant in the future high-end drives over other technologies, such as particulate media or MIG heads.(omitted)mitted)