Observation of Slider Landing Process in Hard Disk Drive

With the decrease in slider flying height, slider flying instability caused by slider–disk interactions is becoming a big concern. Novel technology has to be employed to further improve our understandings about slider–disk interaction. In this work, a slider flying height-attitude testing (3D) system was employed to study slider–disk interaction during a slider landing process to demonstrate its capability for the application. It is shown that great details of slider–disk interactions and subtle variations of the slider flying attitude during the landing process can be revealed with the 3D system. Slider dynamic flying height and attitude (pitch and roll angles) during the landing process can be determined from the data recorded in one test. Furthermore, analysis in frequency domain can be done not only on flying height, but also on pitch and roll angles directly. It is found that the slider landing process can have different stages during which slider performance and characteristics of slider–disk interaction are different.