Patent ID: 8185968

Claim:
A magnetic head inspection method, applied to scan and measure a surface shape of a recording portion of a magnetic head in a row-bar state diced from a wafer by using an atomic force microscope (AFM), and based on the measurement result, in a state of maintaining a magnetic probe in a cantilever unit of a magnetic force microscope (MFM) at a position away from the surface of the recording portion of the magnetic head by a distance equivalent to a flying height of the magnetic head relative to a magnetic disk, enable the magnetic probe to scan and move along a surface of a write pole portion of the magnetic head, so as to detect a signal representing an oscillation state of the cantilever unit, and measure an effective track width of the magnetic head based on the signal, the method comprising: setting an area smaller than a half of a scanning and measurement area of the magnetic probe in the cantilever unit of the MFM as a scanning and measurement area on the surface of the recording portion of the magnetic head that is scanned by the AFM.