Patent ID: 8098462

Claim:
A manufacturing method of a thin-film magnetic head, comprising the steps of: forming many thin-film magnetic heads arranged along row and column directions on a wafer, each of the thin-film magnetic heads having a read head element, a write head element, pairs of lead conductors having one ends electrically connected with said read head element and said write head element, respectively, pairs of first bumps having one ends electrically connected with the other ends of said pairs of lead conductors, pairs of second bumps having one ends electrically connected with the other ends of said pairs of first bumps, and pairs of probe-use pads electrically connected with the other ends of said pairs of second bumps, said pairs of probe-use pads being positioned so that all of said pairs of probe-use pads are removed by a cutting process along the row direction, said pairs of first bumps being positioned so that at least part of each first bumps is removed by the cutting process along the row direction, said pairs of second bumps being positioned so that all of said pairs of second bumps are removed by the cutting process along the row direction; obtaining a plurality of row-bars by cutting said wafer along the row direction so that all of said pairs of probe-use pads are removed, each of the obtained row-bars having the thin-film magnetic heads aligned in the row direction; forming pairs of bonding pads electrically connected with said read head element and said write head element, respectively, on a surface opposite to an air bearing surface of each thin-film magnetic head of each of said row-bars; and cutting each row-bar along the column direction to separate into individual thin-film magnetic heads.