Patent ID: 8477459

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: a disk drive base; a disk rotably mounted to the disk drive base; an actuator pivotably mounted to the disk drive base, the actuator including a flexible printed circuit (FPC) that includes a plurality of electrically conductive FPC bond pads; and at least one head gimbal assembly attached to the actuator, the at least one head gimbal assembly comprising a read head; and a suspension assembly that comprises a load beam, and a laminate flexure that comprises a structural layer, first and second conductive layers, a first dielectric layer between the first and second conductive layers, and a second dielectric layer between the structural layer and the second conductive layer, the second conductive layer including a plurality of electrical traces, the laminate flexure including a tongue portion that connects to the read head and a flexure tail that extends to the plurality of FPC bond pads; wherein the flexure tail includes a plurality of flexure bond pads, each of the plurality of flexure bond pads being aligned with a corresponding one of the plurality of FPC bond pads; and wherein each of the plurality of flexure bond pads includes a widened region of a corresponding one of the plurality of electrical traces in the second conductive layer, a corresponding one of a plurality of discontinuous islands in the structural layer, and a corresponding one of a plurality of discontinuous islands in the first conductive layer that is electrically connected to the widened region of the corresponding one of the plurality of electrical traces in the second conductive layer through one of a first plurality of conductive vias through the first dielectric layer.