Numerical simulation of shock response of a hard disk drive at operational state

Magnetic recording hard disk drives (HDDs) are used for data storage in a wide range of host systems, including desktop and portable computers, servers, and consumer electronic devices, such as digital video recorder (DVRs) and portable MP3 players. HDDs in new applications experience much harsh shock environments. A shock at operational state can results in a severe slider/disk interface damage and data loss. Available studies focused on component level or non-operational state. In this paper, we focused on the drive level shock response during operation, and analyzed the parametric effect on shock robustness, such as actuator arm thickness, base and cover, spindle stiffness, etc.