Patent ID: 7974039
Filing Date: 2011-07-05
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
1. A disk drive to reduce head instability during disk drive manufacturing, the disk drive comprising: a disk; a dynamic flying height (DFH) read/write head; a flying height actuator to control the spacing between the DFH read/write head and the disk; a touch distance sensor to measure a spacing signal between the DFH read/write head and the disk; and a controller for controlling operations in the disk drive including: applying a sloped increasing power between a first voltage and a second voltage to move the DFH read/write head towards the disk; receiving the spacing signal from the touch distance sensor; determining if the DFH head is approaching touchdown based on the spacing signal, and if not, applying a second sloped increasing power between the second voltage and a third voltage; wherein, if at the third voltage, the DFH head is determined to be approaching touchdown based upon the spacing signal, a touchdown calibration value for the DFH read/write head to avoid head-disk interaction is set at the second voltage.