Aerodynamically induced power loss in hard disk drives

In this paper, the effects of rotational speed, form factor and enclosure conditions on power dissipation in hard disk drives are presented. The aerodynamically dissipated power losses by 3.5, 2.5 and 1 in. hard disks are experimentally measured using a vacuum chamber and compared to theoretical estimations. Experiments in open air without enclosure agree well with theoretical predictions; a 3.5-in. disk satisfies the turbulent model but 1 and 2.5-in. disks match the laminar one, which is inversely proportional to the half power of Reynolds number. Experiments using a single 3.5-in. disk in enclosure show that aerodynamic power loss is proportional to the second power of rotational speed and the fourth power of disk radius, which agrees with the laminar theory rather than turbulent one. It is also shown that the aerodynamic power loss is reduced as the axial gap and radial clearance of enclosure decrease.     

Active magnetic inertia latch for hard disk drives

In this paper, a new hybrid inertia latch is proposed to improve the shock resistance and the loading time for hard disk drives. The new latch mechanism combines the inertia effect and the magnetic force by additional yoke and magnets, reducing the time required for loading the head to media that is the mechanical limitation of the widely used pawl inertia latch. The operating mechanism of the proposed latch is optimally designed using an electromagnetic simulation, and it is verified by experiments using a prototype. The new latch system reduces the time required for loading the head to media up to 8 ms.     

Earliest switch-on of dual-stage actuation in hard disk drives

In conventional track-settling process, dual-stage actuation (DSA) is not activated until the read/write head is in close proximity to the target track so that chances of saturation are reduced. In this paper, we propose an earliest switch-on scheme based on the calculation of the exact saturation boundary, considering both position error signal and voice coil motor velocity error. It allows the DSA loop to be switched on earlier than current practices while piezoelectric actuators remain unsaturated. Simulations on a 2.5\(''\) commercially available hard disk drive show that the proposed scheme can reduce the post-seek oscillation and shorten the 5 % track-settling time by more than 16 % in the presence of in-drive disturbances.     

A U-shaped actuation system for dual-stage actuators used in hard disk drives

In this paper, we propose an actuation system, called U-shaped actuation, for dual-stage actuator to suppress the arm mode flutter. We manufactured an actuator using this actuation method and measured the frequency response. We found that the frequency response had an in-phase arm mode frequency and that there was little difference between each head at arm sway and suspension sway mode. Next, we designed a controller and compared its sensitivity function with that of conventional actuation. By applying stabilizing control to the in-phase arm mode, NRRO of the arm flutter of the outer and inner arms was suppressed by 10.9 and 13.2?%, respectively.     

A hybrid filesystem for hard disk drives in tandem with flash memory

The traditional hard disk drive (HDD) is often a bottleneck in the overall performance of modern computer systems. With the development of solid state drives (SSD) based on flash memory, new possibilities are available to improve secondary storage performance. In this work, we propose a new hybrid SSD–HDD storage system and a selection of algorithms designed to assign pages across an HDD and an SSD to optimise I/O performance. The hybrid system combines the advantages of the SSD’s fast random seek speed with the sequential access speed and large storage capacity of the HDD to produce significantly improved performance in a variety of situations. We further improve performance by allowing concurrent access across the two types of storage devices. We show the drive assignment problem is NP-complete and accordingly propose effective heuristic solutions. Extensive experiments using both synthetic and real data sets show our system with a small SSD can outperform a striped dual HDD and remain competitive with a dual SSD.     

Modeling and controlling flow-induced suspension-head unit vibrations in hard disk drives

 The problem of flow-induced vibrations of suspension-head units (SHUs) in hard disk drives is investigated numerically. Attention is focused on the simplest geometrical and dynamical conditions that retain the physics essential to SHUs in real drives. Conservation equations are solved for the constant property, two-dimensional, unsteady flow of air past a pair of prisms contained in a channel with sliding walls. Each prism simulates the suspension section of a SHU. The prisms face each other symmetrically and are aligned parallel to the sliding channel walls, normal to their direction of motion. The sliding channel walls simulate the rotating disks in a drive. The flow fields obtained are used to calculate SHU vibration frequencies. For this, the suspension section of a SHU is approximated as an Euler–Bernoulli beam (linear motion) of constant h e i g h t2m m w i d t h.2m m h e i g h t.2m m w i d t h5m m h e i g h t2m m w i d t h.2m m-shaped cross-section (henceforth denoted as “U-shaped”) with a point mass, representing the magnetic head, located at its tip. The beam is assumed to be very stiff, meaning that movements near the design point (away from resonances) are small. This allows reliable solutions to be obtained by treating the flow as being unaffected by the miniscule motions of the suspensions, whereas the suspensions are fully affected by the unsteadiness imparted to them by the flow. SHU vibration characteristics have been determined relative to the flow fields that induce them for a variety of conditions. The paper discusses a subset of these for a flow at 50 m/s as well as the possible adaptation of interactive computational-experimental methodologies (ICEME) to minimize and/or control flow-induced vibrations of SHUs in hard drives. Received: 28 August 2001/Accepted: 17 December 2001     

Dual-stage servo systems and vibration compensation in computer hard disk drives

This paper discusses two mechatronic innovations in magnetic hard disk drive servo systems, which may have to be deployed in the near future, in order to sustain the continuing 60% annual increase in storage density of these devices. The first is the use of high bandwidth dual-stage actuator servo systems to improve the precision and track-following capability of the read/write head positioning control system. The second is the instrumentation of disk drive suspensions with vibration sensing strain gages, in order to enhance airflow-induced suspension vibration suppression in hard disk drives.     

Six-DOF vibrations of partial contact sliders in hard disk drives

A six-degree-of-freedom slider dynamic simulator is developed to analyze the slider’s motion in the vertical, pitch, roll, yaw, length and width directions. The modified time-dependent Reynolds equation is used to model the air bearing and a new second order slip model is used for a bounded contact air bearing pressure. The simulator considers the air bearing shear acting on the air bearing surface and the slider–disk contact and adhesion. Simulation results are analyzed for the effects of the disk surface micro-waviness and roughness, skew angle, slider–disk friction and micro-trailing pad width on the vertical bouncing, down-track and off-track vibrations of a micro-trailing pad partial contact slider.     

Head-positioning control system using thermal actuator in hard disk drives

In this paper, we propose a head-positioning control system with a thermal actuator in hard disk drives (HDDs). The frequency response of the thermal actuator showed that the thermal actuator system has no mechanical resonant mode. Therefore, this head-positioning system with a thermal actuator can control the head-position beyond the major mechanical resonances caused by a voice coil motor (VCM) or suspensions. In this study, the system was a dual-stage actuator system; the first actuator was a VCM, and the second was a thermal actuator. Simulation results for a track-following control in an HDD demonstrated the validity of the proposed method.     

Relieving the burden of track switch in modern hard disk drives

In this work, we propose a novel hard disk technique, “AV Disk”, for modern multimedia applications. Modern hard disk drives adopt complex sector layout mechanisms to reduce track and head switch overhead. While these complex sector layout mechanism can reduce average overhead involved in the track and head switch, they bring larger variability in the overhead. From a multimedia application’s point of view, it is important to minimize the worst case I/O latency rather than to improve the average IO latency. We focus our effort to minimize track switch overhead as well as the variability in track switch overhead involved in disk I/O. We propose that track of the hard disk drive is aligned with a certain IO size. In this work, we develop an elaborate performance model with which we can compute the optimal IO unit size for multimedia applications. We propose that hard disk controller is responsible for positioning data blocks in the hard disk platter in such a manner that I/O units are not placed across the track boundaries, where a single I/O unit has size of 32–128 KByte. Optimal IO unit size is used in aligning the tracks in hard disk drives. We develop Skewed Sector Sparing technique in aligning a track with a given IO size. However, when the I/O unit for alignment is increased to 128 KByte, 17% of the disk space becomes unusable. Despite the decreased storage area, track aligning technique increases the overall performance of the hard disk. According to our simulation-based experiment, overall disk performance increases about 5–25%. Given that capacity of hard disk increases 100% every year, we cautiously regard it as reasonable tradeoff to increase the I/O latency of the disk.     

Analysis of slip characteristics between dimple and flexure in hard disk drives

A mobile hard disk drive (HDD) is often faced with inevitable mechanical problems because of the portability of the drive. Then, almost HDD use much faster emergency parking system to protect the system from these problems. However, very fast emergency parking causes a large ramp contact, which could create dimple-flexure interactions such as a dimple-flexure slip, head-gimbal assembly vibration, unexpected slider motion. These dimple-flexure interactions largely affect the flyability of a slider. As such, dimple-flexure interactions are one of the most important factors in designing a mobile HDD. Therefore, in this study, we characterized the dimple-flexure slip among dimple-flexure interactions and analyzed it using a combination of experiments and finite element modeling. We evaluated the feasibility of dimple-flexure slip and verified the main cause of dimple-flexure slip. We also investigated the relationship between dimple-flexure slips and ramp contact during emergency parking. Finally, we designed the finite element ramp contact simulation, and analyzed dynamic characteristics for the dimple-flexure slip.     

Thermal mechanics of a contact sensor used in hard disk drives

A typical thermal-contact sensor (TCS) used in hard-disk drives was investigated by the simulation. Analytical solution to solve temperature variation of sensor due to frictional heat was built to estimate the sensor temperature rise under variable heating power and interference height between the head and disk. To accurately and systematically qualify sensor-temperature distribution and resistance variation under certain variable conditions and sensor time constant, head housing a TCS was modeled by ANSYS commercial software, and thermal-mechanics of TCS coupled with air bearing dynamics was simulated. Simulated results indicated that a TCS with a proper size of 1 μm or less had a maximum resistance variation on friction induced heating to generate a maximum TCS signal output. The sensor-heating maximum protrusion was less that 0.1 nm, and time constant of TCS is about 0.125 μs and its response frequency is about 8 MHz. With a highly accurate measurement system, TCS can detect out asperities of tens of nanometers or less. These results will be helpful in developing and designing thermal-contact sensors for use in hard-disk drives.     

Separated pivot-shaft actuator for small skew angle in hard disk drives

A large skew angle in a hard disk drive (HDD) adversely affects the flying stability of the head sliders and the off-track capability of the read/write head. A novel actuator in the form of a separated pivot-shaft actuator (SPA) with a small skew angle is proposed in this paper. The SPA was particularly designed for a four-disk 3.5-in. HDD and has a skew angle of ±1.6°, which is approximately one-tenth of that of a conventional voice coil motor. The SPA was numerically analyzed by a finite element method, and its mechanical characteristics were compared with those of a long-arm actuator (LAA) (which is a strong candidate for a small-skew-angle actuator) with respect to the seek performance and frequency response. It was found that the SPA had a higher resonant frequency, which enabled the achievement of a wider servo-bandwidth compared to the LAA, and that the average seek time of the SPA was significantly shorter than that of the LAA.     

A design based on final-state control for residual vibrationless seeking in hard disk drives

A new design method - based on a final-state control (FSC) - for short-span seeking in a hard-disk drive (HDD) has been developed. The short-span seeking is performed by two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) control, which uses a feedforward (FF) control input along with a reference trajectory. The design method can directly generate the FF control input, whose derivative at a specified order is minimized and whose power spectrum amplitude is reduced at a specified frequency. The residual vibration caused by mechanical resonance can therefore be reduced by the generated FF control input. Test with a 2.5-in form-factor HDD experimentally confirmed that the developed seeking control significantly reduces the residual vibration in a HDD.     

Servo signal processing for flying height control in hard disk drives

A novel method of measuring the relative head-medium spacing based on a measurement in the servo sectors is developed and simulated using a read back signal model. The spacing measurement is tested experimentally on a spin stand where the flying height is varied using the resistance heater element in a thermal flying height control slider. In addition, voltage step response measurements were obtained. The data were used to perform system identification and estimate the dynamics of the thermal actuator. The model can potentially be used for thermal flying height control.     

Fabrication and characterization of DRIE-micromachined electrostatic microactuators for hard disk drives

In this paper, deep micromachined three-dimensional (3-D) electrostatic microactuators used for dual-stage positioning system of hard disk drives are reported. Actuators with parallel-arranged comb drives enhance the electrostatic driving force. By using proper flexures, secondary stage actuators will drive the magnetic head with fast response and high accuracy. Fabrication of the actuators starts with a 200-μm-thick n-type silicon wafer, and it is subsequently bonded to a Pyrex glass substrate, which can be called silicon-on-glass process. This process is more cost-effective than the SOI wafer process, and the high aspect ratio structures with large thickness also provide good strength and reliability for the microactuators. Deep RIE and wafer bonding techniques were utilized to fabricate the electrostatic actuators. The fabricated actuators were statically and dynamically characterized for three different designs of straight-flexures, folded-flexures and quad-flexures with bandwidth of 7.15, 5.85 and 15.85 kHz, respectively. With proper designed flexures, the proposed microactuators would fulfill the requirements of the dual-stage servo of hard disk drives.     

Effects of temperature on particle trajectories inside hard disk drives

The presence of particles, which can intrude into the gas bearing, is one of the most common factors in the failure of hard disk drives (HDDs). Previous works investigated particle trajectories inside air-filled drives without considering temperature effects on the distribution of particles. Actually, especially for the submicron particle, particle trajectories and trapping status are affected by the temperature gradient since the thermophoretic force cannot be ignored. In this paper, considering major heat generation components such as the spindle motor and voice coil motor (VCM), trajectories and trapping status for Al₂O₃ particles inside a 2.5 inch helium-filled drive are simulated by the commercial computational fluid dynamics solver FLUENT with user-defined functions (UDFs). The trapping criterion for Al₂O₃ particles is used as boundary conditions for different colliding surfaces. The results reveal that particles in the air-filled drive will more likely degrade the head–disk interface (HDI) reliability. In addition, after considering the temperature, the particle trapping rate by the disk decreases both inside the air-filled drive and the helium-filled drive. And its reduction inside the air-filled drive is larger. Moreover, small particles will more likely degrade the HDI reliability since they can follow the rotatory flow well and have more chance to collide with the disk surface, and then easily attach onto the disk surface.