Dual track Wallace fly height measurement method to monitor slider motion in 2 dimension at near contact regime

Abstract

Head media spacing of hard disk drive (HDD) is expected to continue its reduction in order to support areal density growth. At sub-nm clearance between the head and the disk, the intermittent head disk contact and interactions may happen. This does not only cause the fly height modulation but also induces the off-track motions as well. It is desirable to understand the characteristics of the 2D motions in the near contact regime, so as to enable further reduction of the clearance and to improve the reliability of HDD. This paper presents a method to measure instantaneous fly height (FH) motion and cross track motion concurrently by using read back signal from the dual data tracks written at different frequencies. The method is able to separate the FH motion and cross track motion of the head.