Patent ID: 6950281

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: a housing having a base; a disk rotatably mounted in said housing and having a plurality of tracks; a negative pressure type head slider having a transducer for reading/writing data from/to said disk, a disk opposing surface, an air inlet end, and an air outlet end; and an actuator for moving said head slider across said tracks of said disk; said actuator comprising: an actuator arm rotatably mounted on said base; a suspension fixed at a base end portion thereof to a front end portion of said actuator arm; and said head slider mounted on a front end portion of said suspension; said head slider comprising: a front pad formed on said disk opposing surface at a position near said air inlet end, said front pad having a raised surface and a step surface lower in level than said raised surface; said transducer formed near said air outlet end; a first groove for generating a negative pressure by expanding air once compressed at said front pad; and a plurality of second grooves formed on the bottom surface of said first groove so as to continuously extend from the downstream side of said front pad to said air outlet end, said second grooves being spaced from each other in the transverse direction of said head slider, said second grooves extending along air streamlines generated on the bottom surface of said first groove in a CSS zone.