Performance Evaluation of Array-Reader-Based Magnetic Recording with a Drive-Tap Measurement Platform

Array-reader-based magnetic recording (ARMR) is one of the promising candidates to achieve areal density beyond 1 Tb/in² in magnetic hard disk drives. Joint signal processing of multiple readback streams from the array-reader enables reliable data retrieval under high linear densities and large track squeezes, compared with the single-reader system. In this paper, we present the development of an ARMR evaluation platform employing a single-reader-based drive-tap to expedite performance evaluation under realistic drive environments. The drive-tap interface of the platform can control track squeeze and linear bit density conditions, and optimal bit-aspect ratio-based areal density capability (ADC) can be assessed with this platform. The resulting measurements show that, for the head-media used in this paper, the ARMR ADC gain over single-reader is around 6.7% with shingled magnetic recording at outer diameter (OD) and around 4.9% with perpendicular magnetic recording at OD.