Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
gap, is on the trailing end of the slider.
Figure 8.7. The underside of a typical head mini slider.
The trend toward smaller and smaller form factor drives has forced sliders to become smaller as
well. The typical Mini-Winchester slider design was about 4mm×3.2mm×0.86mm in size. Most head
manufacturers have since shifted to smaller Micro, Nano, Pico, or Femto sliders. The Femto sliders
in use today are extremely small—about the size of the ball in the tip of a ballpoint pen. Pico and
Femto sliders are assembled by using flex interconnect cable (FIC) and chip on ceramic (COC)
technologies that enable the process to be completely automated.
Table 8.1
shows the characteristics of the various types of sliders used in hard disk drives.
Table 8.1. Hard Disk Drive Slider Types
Smaller sliders reduce the mass carried at the end of the head actuator arms, which provides
increased acceleration and deceleration, thus leading to faster seek times. The smaller sliders also
require less surface area, allowing the head to track closer to the outer and inner diameters, thus
increasing the usable area of the disk platters. Further, the smaller slider contact area reduces the
slight wear on the platter surface that occurs during normal startup and spindown of the drive platters.
Figure 8.8
shows a magnified photo of a Femto slider mounted on the head gimbal assembly, which is
on the end of the head actuator arm.
