Patent ID: 7969826

Claim:
A thermally assisted magnetic recording head support mechanism comprising: a carriage having a support and an arm extending from the support; suspensions attached to the top and bottom surfaces of the arm, respectively; a slider supported by each of the suspensions, with a magnetic head mounted thereon, the magnetic head having a read element, a write element, and an optical near-field transducer; an optical block attached to the carriage, provided with one unit of light source, and an optical switching mechanism for switching a guidance destination of irradiated light from the light source; and a plurality of first optical waveguides for receiving light from the optical block to be subsequently guided to the optical near-field transducer, wherein the optical switching mechanism comprises a second optical waveguide for receiving the irradiated light of the light source, a first fixed block for securing an end of the second optical waveguide, on a side thereof, adjacent to the light source, a movable block for securing the other end of the second optical waveguide, an actuator for transferring the movable block, a second fixed block for securing one end of each of the plurality of the first optical waveguides, and the guidance destination of the irradiated light of the light source is switched to any of the plurality of the first optical waveguides by transferring the movable block with the use of the actuator.