Abstract: Windage is the sum of multifarious airflows induced and endured inside a disk drive. The invention provides a disk drive suspension and method for use in windage conditions within a disk drive. The suspension has a base portion carrying a hinge portion that carries a beam portion having oppositely facing first and second surfaces. The second surface supports a flexible circuit. Where the beam portion first surface has surface features inducing tracking error-causing perturbations of the beam portion from windage contact with the features, an airfoil profile-defining deflector is provided in operative association with the beam portion to block windage contact with those features and eliminate track misregistration error caused by interaction of the windage and the features.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for reduced contribution to suspension hinge stiffness of an electrical interconnect metal layer while retaining substantial impedance reductions from the metal layer use a sinuous pattern of removed and retained subregions of the metal layer selectively and distributively to ease bending of the metal layer and decrease its stiffness contribution while the retained metal layer subregions provide a substantial proportion of the impedance reduction normally provided by the metal layer.

Abstract: Reduced cross talk between adjacent read and write circuits in a disk drive suspension interconnect results from interposing a ground trace conductor between the circuits and generally for the full length thereof and grounding the ground trace conductor suitably through a further metal layer on the opposite side of the insulative layer that supports the interconnect read and write circuits. The ground trace conductor or other metal strip located like ground trace conductor is used to define a precise locus for optical alignment of the electrical interconnect relative to the suspension flexure better than the insulative layer through more accurate etching of the metal strip. The first metal layer and the insulative layer may be made by an additive process.

Abstract: A novel flexure or interconnect for a disk drive suspension having a locally different thickness and/or width of insulative layer and a locally different thickness, width and/or relative spacing in its trace conductors to vary capacitance and circuit impedance values accordingly to locally desirable different and optimum values for the type of circuit and the suspension features.

Abstract: A novel flexure provides an improved disk drive suspension, the flexure having a different thickness of insulative film between its metal layer and respective ones of its read and write conductor circuits to vary the circuit impedances accordingly to different and optimum values for each type of circuit.

Abstract: A novel flexure provides an improved disk drive suspension, the flexure having a different thickness of insulative film between its metal layer and respective ones of its read and write conductor circuits to vary the circuit impedances accordingly to different and optimum values for each type of circuit.