Recording Characteristics of MR/Inductive Magnetic Head

Recently the market demand for portable computers has redoubled the need for compact hard disk drives with high storage capacities. The reproduced output from an inductive head depends on the medium velocity, a fact which impedes efforts to obtain higher capacities from small-diameter disk drives. However, the playback output from an MR head does not depend on the medium velocity, making such heads attractive for use in small-diameter drives. In this work, shunt bias in-gap type heads with an MR element in the gap, and SAL (soft adjacent layer) bias piggyback-type heads with an MR element outside the gap, were trial-fabricated, and their recording characteristics were examined. A SAL bias piggyback-type head with read track of width 4.0 ¿m delivered an output of 300 ¿Vp-p at 28.6 kFCI, with an error rate of 10^-12.