Investigation of Soft Failure of Small Form Factor HDD under Forced Vibration

As small form factor hard disk drives (HDD) are increasingly used in portable consumer devices, the performance of the HDD in daily activity is highly concerned. In this paper, the soft failure of the hard disk drive under forced vibration is investigated. To investigate the cause of the soft failure, experimental frequency analysis was conducted. Modal analysis of HDD was completed by experiment and verified by FEM simulations and the result was compared to the frequency response result. Studies show that the vibration modes of head suspension assembly (HSA) and disk platter at higher resonant frequencies do not directly related to the soft failure