A new W-shaped single-pole head and a high density flexible disk perpendicular magnetic recording system

A new single-pole head with no auxiliary pole was developed for perpendicular magnetic recording. The head is called WSP head (W-shaped Single Pole head) because the head has a W-shaped side core which contributes to increase the recording and reproducing sensitivitiy. The head field of the new head has the same distribusion as that of an auxiliary pole head[1]. The recording and reproducing sensitivity of the head is equal to or higher than that of a ring-type video head. The head eliminates mechanical problems which prevent its application in perpendicular magnetic recording because we can locate the head on one side of the recording medium. As a possible application of the WSP head, a 3 1/2-inch flexible disk recording system was constructed. A linear recording density of the flexible disk system was 65.5 kbits/inch. This density is equivalent to 8 times that of the existing high-density 3 1/2-inch micro-floppy and 11 times that of a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk. In termes of information storage, this density gives a 4 megabyte unformated capacity on one side of a 3 1/2-inch flexible disk. The overwrite signal-to-noise ratio was greater than 30 dB and the peakshift displacement was less than 10 % at the linear dinsity of 65.5 kbits/inch.