Spin-stand characterization of thermal stability in high density disk media

An experimental technique has been developed to characterize the thermal stability of recording media. We measured the remanent magnetization decay in a significant range under various reverse fields in a short time scale. By directly fitting the experimental data with an Arrhenius-Neel type model, the effective energy barrier distribution has been estimated. Unlike other previously reported techniques, this new technique enables more accurate analysis of energy barrier distribution and reliable evaluation of long-term stability for media with a wide range of thermal stability.