Back to results
US 7,453,662 B2Granted
Estimating residual temperature for flying height adjustment of read/write heads
AssigneeSeagate Technology LLC
InventorJihao Luo
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods of estimating a flying height of a read/write head include determining an idle period of the head since a last selection of the head as a working head, estimating the residual temperature of the head in response to the idle period, and estimating the flying height of the head in response to the estimated residual temperature of the head.
Claims21
A method of estimating a flying height of a read/write element, the method comprising:
- determining an idle period of a head on which the read/write element is located since a last use of the head as a working head for reading/writing data;
- estimating the residual temperature of the head in response to the idle period;
- and
- providing the estimated residual temperature of the read/write head as an input to a flying height controller.
1 more element
A circuit, comprising:
- a head temperature estimator that estimates a residual temperature of a head on which a read/write element is located since a last use of the read/write element;
- and
- a heater controller that controls a heater element associated with the read/write element in response to the estimated residual temperature of the head to control a flying height of the read/write element based on the estimated residual temperature of the head.
A disk drive, comprising:
- a data storage disk;
- a head that flies on an air bearing proximate the data storage disk and that includes a read/write element that reads data from and writes data to the data storage disk;
- a head temperature estimator that determines an idle period of the head since a last selection of the head as a working head for reading/writing data, and that estimates the residual temperature of the head in response to the idle period;
- and
- a flying height controller that controls the flying height of the read/write element in response to the estimated residual temperature of the head.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.