Abstract: A magnetic disk drive apparatus includes a housing member with at least one opened face, a cover member for covering the at least one opened face of the housing member, a head gimbal assembly including a magnetic head slider and a suspension for supporting the magnetic head slider, a support arm for supporting the head gimbal assembly, a magnetic disk to which the magnetic head slider opposed, and a motor for rotating the magnetic disk. The magnetic disk and the motor are attached to the housing member. The support arm is fixed to the cover member using a clamping hole formed through the cover member. The cover member has a local deformation structure that is capable of locally deforming and formed around the clamping hole.

Abstract: A disc tray of an optical disc drive includes a tray body having a seating surface on which an optical disc is to be seated. The tray body is installed in the optical disc drive to slide in and out of the optical disc drive. The disc tray also includes a window bored through the disc tray so that an optical pickup to record or read data accesses the optical disc, and a vortex restraint unit which spatially restrains a vortex generated by a rotation of the optical disc.

Abstract: A disc drive includes a housing surrounding a voice coil in a voice coil cavity, and a disc in a disc cavity. The disc has data tracks and an outer diameter. The disc rotates to induce an airflow along the outer diameter. The voice coil actuates an actuator arm in the disc cavity to access the data tracks. An air dam is in the disc cavity upstream of the actuator arm. The airflow includes a straight line tangent airflow portion along a straight edge of a shroud that is free of obstructions and upstream of the air dam. The straight line airflow portion extends from an arc airflow portion around the outer diameter to the voice coil cavity along a straight line path tangent to the outer diameter.

Abstract: A magnetic head device includes terminal pads formed on a side surface of a magnetic head, the magnetic head being installed on the edge of one surface side of a base plate; and a flexible wiring board comprising a connection terminal portion connected to each of the terminal pads of the magnetic head, a wiring extension portion extended from the connection terminal portion, and an extension terminal portion extended from the wiring extension portion. Herein, the connection terminal portion is disposed on the one surface of the base plate adjacently to the terminal pads of the magnetic head on the base plate; the wiring extension portion is folded back toward the other surface side of the base plate; the extension terminal portion is mounted on the other surface of the base plate; and the connection terminal portion and each of the terminal pads of the magnetic head are electrically interconnected.

Abstract: A disk cartridge has a reflection portion to identify a kind of a disk in the disk cartridge. A disk drive apparatus has an optical detector to identify the kind of the disk by irradiating a beam to the reflection portion and detecting the reflected beam. The disk cartridge and the disk drive apparatus provide identification marks for identifying the kind of the disk by varying the angle and amount of a beam reflected from the reflection portions on the disk cartridge. Therefore, the kind of a disk and the type of a disk format are identified as well as the storage capacity of the disk.

Abstract: A method for forming a spin-valve type abutted junction GMR sensor element with a thinner hard magnetic longitudinal bias layer having significantly improved magnetic properties in the junction region and a spin-valve type abutted junction GMR sensor element with a thinner hard magnetic longitudinal bias layer having significantly improved magnetic properties in the junction region fabricated according to that method.

Abstract: An optical disk drive having a turntable for carrying an optical disk with a clamping plate made of a magnetic material having a clamping area. A magnet is included for attracting to a turntable side the clamping plate of the optical disk placed on the turntable in a noncontact state. A motor is included for rotating the turntable with the optical disk placed thereon, wherein an attraction force of the magnet attracting the clamping plate is a value by which bending of the optical disk accompanied with the attraction of the clamping plate becomes within a permissible error range. A recording and reproducing apparatus may also incorporate the optical disk drive.

Abstract: Currently, the shield-to-shield separation of a spin valve head cannot be below about 800 ?, mainly due to sensor-to-lead shorting problems. This problem has now been overcome by inserting a high permeability, high resistivity, thin film shield on the top or bottom (or both) sides of the spin valve sensor. A permeability greater than about 500 is required together with a resistivity about 5 times greater than that of the free layer and an MrT value for the thin film shield that is 4 times greater than that of the free layer. Five embodiments of the invention are described.

Abstract: A disk drive with an ejection apparatus having a locking pin and a latch is provided. The locking pin is movably disposed on the tray while the latch is rotatably disposed on the housing. The latch includes a blocking part and a guiding part. When a tray is received in the disk drive, the blocking part of the latch engages with the locking pin. When the tray is ejected, the tray is pushed toward the inner space of the housing. Subsequently, the locking pin escapes from the blocking part and moves to the guiding part of the latch. The locking pin moves along the guiding part and therefore the tray is ejected.

Abstract: A disk reading device operates in both a suction mode and a cover-lifting mode. The device has a lower cover having a wall with an elongated opening provided in the wall, an upper cover that is connected for pivoting movement with respect to the lower cover, and a disk receiving space between the lower and upper covers. The disk receiving space is accessible via the elongated opening in a suction mode and by opening the upper cover with respect to the lower cover in a cover-lifting mode. A disk is drawn via the elongated opening into the disk receiving space, or a disk can be manually placed in the disk receiving space by opening the upper cover with respect to the lower cover. The device also includes a switch that switches operation of the disk reading device from the suction mode to the cover-lifting mode.

Abstract: A recording head has a bottom pole layer and a top pole layer that include pole portions opposed to each other, a recording gap layer being placed between the pole portions. The recording head further has a thin-film coil. A raised portion is formed on a top surface of the recording gap layer in a region where a connecting portion of the thin-film coil is to be located. The coil is formed such that the connecting portion is formed on top of the raised portion. An insulating layer covers the coil and a top surface of the insulating layer is flattened. The connecting portion of the coil is only exposed from the top surface of the insulating layer. A conductive layer to be a lead is connected to the exposed connecting portion.

Abstract: An optical disk apparatus includes a main chassis and a sub-chassis provided on a drawer, and has a skew adjusting mechanism of the main chassis and the sub-chassis which is skew-adjusted with reference to a rotational axis in tangential direction XT, which is parallel to a spot trajectory L of an optical pickup and located in the vicinity of the spot trajectory L, and a rotational axis in radial direction XR perpendicular to the rotational axis in tangential direction XT. This enables the skew adjustment in which a change in height of the optical pickup is small during the adjustment and distortion is small.

Abstract: A housing providing for improved windage characteristics in a disc drive, the housing having a multiple bypass configured to receive and direct fluid flow away from a rotating disc pack assembly. The housing further includes a shroud to contain some fluid flow with the disc pack assembly.

Abstract: A thin film magnetic head suitable for an increase in a packing density and an increase in frequency of a magnetic recorder is provided, while the reliability is maintained, and protrusion of a recording head portion from a surface facing a magnetic disk due to thermal expansion is reduced. In the region between a joint and a recording portion, the spacing dimension between the conductive layers of a first coil adjacent to each other is allowed to be equal to the height dimension of the conductive layer of the first coil, and the space of the first coil is filled in with an inorganic material portion of an insulating layer.

Abstract: A magnetic head includes a slider having a recording and/or reproducing thin film element, and a flexure having an elastically deformable tongue piece, the slider and the flexure being bonded together and electrically connected with a conductive resin film. The conductive resin film includes at least one conductor containing carbon particles, carbon nano-tubes, or a metal nano-powder, a resin adhesive, and a metal conductive filler. The conduction-start voltage of the conductive resin film is set to 1.0 V or less.

Abstract: Coupling between a unit main body and a front panel is detachably carried out by a catch and a device coupling device. The coupling includes a slide provided with a slide plate that slides with respect to a bracket embedded in the unit main body, and a holder is provided at a front face of the slide plate for holding the front panel.

Abstract: A magnetic head positioning mechanism is provided which is excellent in shock-resistance and can achieve high positioning accuracy. By constructing the magnetic head positioning mechanism so that a fine actuator section is composed of an actuator spring made from a thin steel plate, a base plate made from a thick steel plate to be junctioned to the actuator spring, stiffness of the fine actuator section in a vertical direction can be improved with flexibility of a driving spring section mounted on the actuator spring being still kept, that is, with sufficient positioning accuracy and satisfactory stroke being maintained. Moreover, by designing a strength of the fine actuator section so that the actuator spring and a holder arm do not overlap when the base plate is connected to the holder arm, the fine actuator section can be made thin and implementing of the fine actuator section among narrow plates in a positioning device is made easy.

Abstract: An optical disk drive includes a turntable, a first motor for turntable drive, an optical pickup and a drive mechanism arranged on a drive base and a separate traverse base that floats on the drive base. A loading drive mechanism drives a disk loading mechanism. A second motor can be driven in forward and reverse directions to supply drive power to the loading drive mechanism and a pickup drive mechanism. A drive power transfer path switching mechanism is used to switch the path through which drive power from the second motor is transferred to supply power to the loading drive mechanism and pickup drive mechanism. By continuously driving the second motor in one direction, then moving the optical pickup, raising or lowering the turntable, and transporting a disk can be accomplished in this sequence substantially continuously. By reversing the direction of motor drive, these operations can be accomplished substantially continuously in reverse direction in reverse sequence.

Abstract: A disk device for playing back information recorded on an optical disk, includes a device body; a disk tray, moving in the device body between a charging position, into which the optical disk is charged, and a discharging position from which the optical disk is discharged; a chassis, provided in the device body; a turntable, moving between an ascending position and a descending position when the chassis is displaced, and the turntable on which the optical disk is set; and a disk clamper, pivotally arranged on an upper plate of the device body, and clamping the optical disk against the turntable when the turntable is moved to the ascending position. The disk clamper is arranged on the upper plate with a clearance therebetween so that the disk clamper is moved in all radial directions, and an amount of the clearance in a first direction, in which the disk tray moves from the discharging position to the charging position, is smaller than amounts of the clearance in the other directions.

Abstract: In a drive system and a magnetic tape cartridge for use therewith, the magnetic tape cartridge contains a number of magnetic tapes, and the drive system contains at least a like number of read/write heads. The drive system includes a mechanism which is engageable with all of the magnetic tapes in the cartridge for simultaneously extracting all of the magnetic tapes from the cartridge and moving all of the magnetic tapes so that each tape engages with at least one of the read/write heads. Data can then be simultaneously transferred between the engaged tapes and read/write heads, so that the time needed to access data in a read mode, and the time needed to write data in a record mode, are correspondingly reduced by a multiple which is dependent on the number of tapes. All of the tapes are wound onto a single take-up reel.