Capacity Advantage of Array-Reader-Based Magnetic Recording (ARMR) for Next Generation Hard Disk Drives

This paper proposes an array-reader-based magnetic recording (ARMR) approach for enhancing recording capacity in hard disk drives (HDDs). The HDD industry is now at crossroads to choose a technology that will support continued increase in recording density, and the top contenders are bit patterned media recording (BPMR) and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) for near-term and 2-D magnetic recording for long-term. Deployment of BPMR and HAMR has been delayed due to the challenges in media and heads. We propose the ARMR approach as a viable technology that can deliver significant capacity by combining array-reader-based readback with modest changes in readback signal processing. Offtrack performance evaluation using waveforms captured at various squeeze levels show that ARMR offers about 30% enhancement in capacity for single-track detection with two or three read elements positioned at different cross-track positions in the track.