Patent ID: 8102618

Claim:
A hard disk drive, comprising: a housing; a disk mounted to the housing and being rotatable relative to the housing, the disk defining an axis of rotation and a radial direction relative to the axis, and the disk having a outer rim, a downstream side wherein air flows away from the disk, and an upstream side wherein air flows toward the disk; an actuator mounted to the housing and being movable relative to the disk, the actuator having a head for reading data from and writing data to the disk; a filter channel formed in the housing for directing air flow generated by rotation of the disk through an air filter; a shroud located between the filter channel and the disk adjacent to both the downstream and upstream sides of the disk, the shroud having arcuate edge walls that are complementary in shape to the outer rim of the disk; the arcuate edge walls have transverse surfaces that are cylindrical and extend in the axial direction to flatly face the outer rim of the disk, the transverse surfaces being located immediately adjacent to the outer rim of the disk substantially perpendicular to a planar orientation of the disk; each of the arcuate edge walls has an axial dimension that is equal to or greater than an axial dimension of the disk; an entire thickness of the disk is axially aligned with or located within the axial dimension of the arcuate edge walls; and the shroud has arcuate slotted openings that are axially spaced apart from the outer rim of the disk to provide only one ingress and only one egress, respectively, for the filter channel, each of which faces radially inward toward the axis.