Patent ID: 6937419

Claim:
A method of increasing a data storage capacity of a data storage medium, comprising: providing a data storage device with a rotatable data storage medium having a recordable data storage area and a load/unload zone that comprises a portion of the data storage area, and a slider having a head for reading data from and writing data to the data storage area; orienting the slider relative to the data storage medium so that the slider has a positive pitch static attitude defined by a trailing edge of the slider being closer to the data storage medium than a leading edge of the slider, such that the trailing edge approaches the data storage medium before the leading edge, and thereby reduces contact between the leading edge and the data storage medium; providing a landing pad on the slider adjacent to the trailing edge for reducing direct contact between the slider and the data storage medium; reducing a load velocity of the slider to reduce damage to the data storage medium and thermal erasure of data recorded on the data storage medium due to an impact between the slider and the data storage medium, the load velocity being defined by a rate at which the slider moves toward the data storage medium; performing load/unload cycles with the slider on the data storage medium during manufacturing of the data storage device prior to any servo writing operations in the data storage area to remove abnormalities present in the data storage area such that, if damage to the data storage area occurs during this phase of manufacturing, then a damaged portion of the data storage area is mapped out so that no data is written in the damaged portion; and writing data to and reading data from the load/unload zone of the data storage area.