Demonstration of track following technique based on discrete track media

A discrete-track medium and drive have been developed. The tracks are on 3.6- mu m-wide lands separated by 1.6- mu m-wide grooved guardbands on a 64-mm disk. The slider was designed considering the grooves. The track-following signals are obtained through a newly developed MR head from marks embossed simultaneously with the formatting of the discrete tracks. Track eccentricity on the spindle has been overcome by introducing feedforward compensation. An areal density of 600 kb/mm/sup 2/ ( approximately 400 Mb/in/sup 2/) was achieved using an external-clock driven partial-response maximum-likelihood.<
>