Modern hard disk drive systems: Fundamentals and future trends

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to provide the readers with a basic technical overview of modern hard disk drives. As a mainstream data storage media, magnetic recording hard disk drives have been enjoying a steady increase in areal recording density for more than four decades, with a rate at least as dramatic as what has been predicted by Moore's Law for the increase of transistor density in integrated circuits. Thanks to continuous advances in recording materials, read and write heads, and read channel signal processing and error correction coding, the areal density increase in hard disk drives appears to be well on track and is steadily moving toward achieving the milestone of 1 Tb/in2. This chapter will provide an overview of modern hard disk drive systems with the focus on recording channel modeling and advanced signal processing and coding techniques being used in current design practice. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.