Patent ID: 7023632

Claim:
A system for identifying and correcting undesired pole tip protrusion (PTP) of a write portion of a read/write head that is configured to transfer data to and from a disk media in a hard disk, said system comprising: a monitoring and PTP determining circuit that monitors a read signal from the read/write head reading the disk media of the hard disk and determines based on the monitored read signal occurrence of an undesired PTP condition; a corrective action assembly that comprises a pole tip burnisher and is configured to correct undesired PTP of the write portion of the read/write head using the pole tip burnisher in response to the monitoring and PTP determining circuit determining occurrence of an undesired PTP condition; and a mechanism configured to write to the disk media through the write portion of the read/write head during a PTP test write cycle, wherein the monitoring and PTP determining circuit monitors the read signal during or right after the PTP test write cycle to determine occurrence of an undesired PTP condition, wherein during the PTP test write cycle the mechanism is configured to continuously write to the disk media through the write portion of the read/write head for a predetermined period of time in a portion of the disk media at a data rate that is higher than a data rate used to write data in the portion of the disk media when not in the PTP test write cycle.