Flexible support mechanism for hard disk drives

A flexible support mechanism for hard-disk drives (HDDs) was devised, prototyped, and evaluated. The flexible support mechanism intercepts the external vibration of a lower frequency than its natural frequency; therefore vibration disturbance in the HDD decreased. Moreover, the resonance frequency of an HDD with a flexible support mechanism is lower than that of an HDD without the mechanism. The servo compensation ratio of HDDs is larger at a lower frequency band. The flexible support mechanism has a high interception ratio to the external disturbance in an HDD by these reasons. It is possible therefore to reduce the head-positioning error (HPE) of an HDD by applying this flexible support structure. The data-transfer rate of an HDD decreases when the HPE increases because a longer read/write time is required. Since applying a flexible support mechanism reduces the HPE, degradation of the read/write performance by vibration disturbance can be prevented. An HDD with the prototyped flexible support mechanism exhibited twice the power-proof than an HDD without the mechanism.