Magnetic signal distribution in disk drives

As the areal density of magnetic storage increases, drive level integration becomes increasingly important. Traditionally most of integration activities are carried out at component level, which can not fully reflect the actual condition in drive. In this work, we introduce a unique method to reveal magnetic signal and noise distribution [1] at drive level. With this approach, magnetic signal distribution in drives can be easily visualized using only drive electronics. In addition, quantitative information can be extracted to reveal conventionally hard to capture event, like magnetic defect shape or track edge information in drives.