Longitudinal recording in a stray field

We have studied the sensitivity of soft error rate (SER) to an external magnetic field in longitudinal hard disk drives. We found that during writing SER is generally quadratic with field amplitude and symmetric with field direction. The application of an external field during writing also shifts the center of the track. In contrast, during reading SER is predominantly linear with field amplitude and antisymmetric with field direction. There is no shift in the track center when the field is applied during reading up to 100 Oe. We explain the difference in the track center shift between writing and reading in terms of the effect of the stray field on the servo positioning system.