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US 12,718,840 B2Granted
Optical signal transmission in a hard disk drive
AssigneeSeagate Technology LLC
InventorsBarish Chakravarty, Mark Anthony Gubbins, Xiong Liu, John Kwong Heng Alphonsus Kwok, Zi Jian Brandon Ang
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed are methods and assemblies used to optically communicate signals within a hard disk drive between controller electronics and recording heads. One or more transceivers in a fixed location can be used to communicate with one or more transceivers positioned on a moveable actuator and coupled to the recording heads. The use of linear motion actuators can help preserve line-of-sight optical communication between the transceivers.
Claims16
A hard disk drive comprising:
- an actuator assembly including actuator arm attached to an actuator body, the actuator arm configured to move a recording head relative to a spinning magnetic disk to thereby read data from and write data to the magnetic disk;
- a preamp attached to the actuator arm, the preamp configured to prepare data read from or to be written to the magnetic disk;
- controller electronics configured to transmit host-readable data to and from the preamp;
- first and second optical transceivers configured to form an optical communication path for data between the preamp and the controller electronics, the first optical transceiver being attached to the actuator assembly and the second optical transceiver positioned off of the actuator assembly;
- and
- a collimator lens disposed to collimate optical signals sent from the first or second optical transceivers.
3 more elements
A hard disk drive comprising:
- an actuator assembly comprising multiple actuator arms interleaved with multiple spaced apart spinning magnetic disks, each actuator arm configured to move an associated recording head relative to a proximal surface of one of the spinning magnetic disks to thereby read data from and write data to said proximal surface;
- one or more preamps attached to the actuator assembly, the one or more preamps configured to prepare data read from or to be written to one or more of the magnetic disks;
- controller electronics configured to transmit host-readable data to and from the one or more preamps;
- one or more first optical transceivers attached to the actuator assembly;
- one or more second optical transceivers positioned in a fixed location off of the actuator assembly;
- and
- a first collimator lens disposed to collimate optical signals sent from the one or more first optical transceivers or a second collimator lens disposed to collimate optical signals sent from the one or more second optical transceivers,
- wherein the one or more first optical transceivers and one or more second optical transceivers are configured to form one or more optical communication paths for data between the one or more preamps and the controller electronics.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.