Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for providing read and write skew offset information for a magneto-resistive head

US6008962A · kind A · utility

21Cited by
11References
7Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMay 1, 1996
Grant dateDec 28, 1999
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 1, 2016

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG11B5/59644
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The present invention is a method and apparatus for generating a skew or position offset signal for aligning the read element of an MR head with the centerline of written data, during a read operation. The disk has a plurality of tracks, one of which contains a calibration burst that allow the read element to be centered with the centerline of written data. This is accomplished by first writing the calibration burst on a predetermined number of sectors of the track. A profile of the calibration burst is obtained by micro-jogging the head from a first position that is -50% from the track centerline to a second position that is +50% of the track centerline, and sensing the magnitude of the calibration burst in various increments between the first and the second positions. For each microjogging position, the magnitude of the calibration burst is obtained. The microjogging position corresponding to the peak value of the calibration burst represents the offset between the read and the write elements. The offset signal is stored in memory and used in a servo routine to center the MR head during a read operation. The calibration burst may be included in a single track, a predetermined num…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.