Noise characteristics and writeability on perpendicular recording media

A FFT-filtering-IFFT technique, based on magnetic force microscopy (MFM) image analysis, has been employed to extract and then analyze the perpendicular media noise and its characteristics at various linear densities. The experimental results from examined media indicate that the predominant media noise at high recording density originate from a magnetic cluster formation and coarsening process, suggesting that one of the present difficulties for achieving high linear density in perpendicular recording scheme resides in the head/media writeability issues.