Patent ID: 6594108
Filing Date: 2003-07-15
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
A disc drive comprising:a sealed housing containing a gas having a volume-averaged gas pressure P; a rotatable disc stack within the housing, comprising a data storage disc having a radius R; a flow-directing channel having inner and outer opposing walls and a curvilinear fastest-flow path passing therebetween, the channel having an inlet and an outlet, the path extending beyond the inlet and beyond the outlet, the inlet being defined as an upstream-most closed planar cross section orthogonal to the path, the outlet being defined as a downstream-most smallest-area planar cross section orthogonal to the path, the channel containing exactly one cross-section orthogonal to the path for each corresponding point on the path, the channel having a length along the path bounded by the inlet and the outlet, at least &frac23; of the length being within a substantially convergent portion of the channel; and a chamber receiving gas from the channel, the chamber having a volume-averaged gas pressure larger than 1.05 P, the chamber bounded by the channel outlet and by a particle-capturing filter.