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The interest in the effects of shock on HDDs has come into currency due to the reduction of the flying height of the head/disk interface and the increasingly hostile environments encountered in the usage of many consumer electronics and portable devices. This paper discusses the shock pulse amplitude and width effects on the shock response of an operational disk drive. The drive is subjected to half sine acceleration shock pulse with varying amplitude and width. A finite element model of the hard disk drive is developed in the commercially available finite element package, ANSYS/LSDYNA. The air bearing between the disk and the slider is modeled by nonlinear springs. The contact between the disk and the slider is also considered. It is found that the shock response of the drive is sensitive to both the shock pulse amplitude and width. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As small form factor (one-inch and smaller) hard disk drives are widely used in portable consumer appliances and gadgets, their mechanical robustness is of greater concern. In the previous work, it is found that when the disk is more tightly clamped, it helps to decrease the shock response of the disk and then avoid the head slap. In this paper, the real boundary condition of the disk for a small form factor hard disk drive from Seagate is investigated numerically. The disk is clamped between the clamp and the hub. The shock response of the disk under a half-sine acceleration pulse is simulated by using the finite element method. In the finite element model, both contact between disk and clamp and contact between disk and hub are considered. According to the simulation results, how to decrease the shock response of the disk is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]