Effects of certain design parameters on load/unload performance [disk drives]

Dynamic load/unload (L/UL) has been widely used in portable and removable drives, and the disk drive industry has started to apply it in desktop and server drives. There are many design parameters in L/UL systems. In this paper, we focus on the effects of the ramp profile, slider burnish, disk RPM, loading velocity, and dimple pre-load on L/UL performance. Our simulation results show that the loading process is much smoother at low RPM, slider burnish increases the steady flying attitudes and slightly smooths the L/UL process. The loading velocity effects are not significant in a wide velocity range for negative pressure sliders. Properly designed ramps can obviously improve the unloading performance, and specially designed ramp profiles can also improve the loading performance at high velocity loading. A larger dimple preload can suppress the pitch oscillation during loading.