Recording Characteristics of MR Head for Hard Disk Drive

A disk drive head combining a shunt-biased MR read element and a multi-turn inductive write element, designed for use in 2.5" hard disk drives, was studied in these experiments. The MR element, consisting of an Ni-Fe film, is positioned in the inductive write gap. The write core consists of Mn-Zn ferrite and Co-Zr-Nb-Ta amorphous film, and has a "shaped-rail" air-bearing surface to achieve high reliability at low flying heights, such as 0.15 ¿m. Outputs of 0.54 mp-p in longitudinal recording, and 0.35 mp-p in perpendicular recording, were obtained from the MR-inductive combination head at a medium velocity of 4.7 m/s, a flying height of 0.15 ¿m, and a track width of 10.0 ¿m. Moreover, in spite of the fact that the MR element did not have a center tap, second harmonic distortions were decreased to less than ¿26 dB.