Patent ID: 7317596

Claim:
A magnetic recording disk drive having a disk and a read head for reading data recorded on the disk, the disk drive comprising: a rotatable disk comprising a substrate and a magnetic recording layer on the substrate and patterned into a plurality of generally concentric data tracks having discrete data bits of magnetic material separated by nonmagnetic regions, the tracks having a track pitch T; a carrier for the read head and having a disk-facing surface and a side surface substantially orthogonal to the disk-facing surface; a first magnetic shield on said side surface; a read head on the first shield and comprising a sensing layer having a width WH parallel to the disk-facing surface, and wherein WH is greater than T; a second magnetic shield on the read head; and an actuator connected to the carrier for positioning the read head to selected data tracks, the actuator supporting the carrier with the read head's sensing layer and its width WH generally parallel to the data track being read.