Patent ID: 7283328

Claim:
A thin-film magnetic head comprising: at least one inductive write head element; and at least one read magnetic head element, said thin-film magnetic head being capable of controlling a spacing between a magnetic recording medium and said at least one magnetic read head element by heating, a gain SG (nm/° C.) of the spacing being greater than a spacing gain threshold SG THLD (nm/° C.) defined by the following expression: SG LIMT =A*dPTP+B A=1.4642E−02*exp(−6.6769E−05*LRD MF ) B=4.9602E−01*exp(−2.0423E−03*LRD MF ) where dPTP represents an amount of change in protrusion (nm) of a top end of said at least one inductive write head element and/or said at least one read magnetic head element by heating, and LRD MF represents a line recording density (kFCI) at a frequency half of the maximum recording frequency.