Patent ID: 7679857
Filing Date: 2010-03-16
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
1. A disk drive for implementing a slider fly height measurement, comprising: a slider with a read/write head having a set of read elements to read data and a set of write elements to write data; a suspension to support the slider and maintain a spacing between the slider and the magnetic data storage medium; a magnetic data storage medium to store data, wherein said data can include constant wavelength signals for minimizing read-back amplitude fluctuation at a fixed spacing during the fly height measurement; a power source to provide a variable control voltage to the spacing between the slider and the magnetic data storage medium thereby changing said spacing and producing a corresponding measurable variation in a track read-back signal amplitude; a means of measuring an averaged value of said track read-back signal amplitude corresponding to said variable control voltage; a quadratic curve-fitting algorithm implemented in the drive to extract a set of coefficients from said track-averaged read-back signal amplitudes and to obtain a value of the fly height thereby.