Patent ID: 7974031

Claim:
In a magnetic recording system that includes a multilevel patterned magnetic recording medium and a write head, the magnetic recording medium including a plurality of spaced-apart data/information storage elements, each storage element including a stacked plurality n of magnetic recording cells, each magnetic recording cell having different magnetic properties, each magnetic recording cell being magnetically decoupled from overlying and/or underlying magnetic recording cells, a method of writing data/information to the storage elements, the method comprising: (a) providing relative movement between the write head and a surface of the magnetic recording medium such that the write head makes a pass over a storage element included in the plurality of storage elements; and (b) writing data/information to the storage element by supplying the write head with a modulated write current that includes a plurality n of pulses of different magnitudes while the write head makes the pass over the storage element, thereby applying n different magnetic field strengths to the storage element in a single pass of the write head over the storage element, the modulated write current including (i) a first pulse of magnitude sufficient to write to a first magnetic recording cell of the storage element having a highest magnetic coercivity of the plurality n of magnetic recording cells and (ii) n−1 succeeding pulses of progressively smaller magnitude for sequentially writing to the remaining n−1 lower magnetic coercivity magnetic recording cells of the storage element but of insufficient magnitude to write to progressively higher magnetic coercivity magnetic recording cells of the storage element.