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Technology Stocks : Western Digital (WDC)

WDC 284.10

+3.8%

Feb 12 3:59 PM EST

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To: Gus who wrote (9692)	7/28/1998 9:45:00 AM
From: Stitch	Read Replies (1) of 11057

Gus, I had a very interesting conversation with a academician from Taiwan this week. He is a professor with the National University in Taiwan and is much involved with the data storage start up I mentioned. His specialty is nanometer level of metrology. He told me that there is a huge commitment behind the effort and that there is good technology property from Integral. One thing Integral did early on was go to an ultra smooth disk in combination with a ramp loaded head. In these drives, a ramp-type load-unload mechanism was used to lift the heads from each disk surface as the actuator travels beyond the disk outer diameter (OD), parking the heads outside of the disk stack. At the end of each head/suspension assembly is a lift tab which engages a ramp, an inclined cam-like surface, positioned at the disk OD to prevent disk surface contact during loading. This was over three years ago. Fairly recently IBM introduced the same type of mechanism in their 2.5 inch Travelstar products. The result is a smooth surface supporting much higher areal density and a mechanism that prevents contact to avoid stiction-friction problems. IBM will likely migrate the ramp loaded head to all products. As you mentioned, Integral also fooled around with fluid bearings. The ball bearing spindle loses its reliability at around 10k RPM. To advance beyond that a different type of bearing is required. Thus fluid bearings are being explored. A company in the U.K. called fluid film devices has been working hard with the data storage industry to get fluid bearings qualified in a program with little success so far. Leaking was a problem but less so now. The real problem is that MR/GMR heads are velocity independent thus slowing the interest among designers for higher spindle rates for the time being. At present there is no need to go to the more expensive spindle. I am hearing that Fujitsu has about decided to bypass fluid bearings and go directly to air bearings. So I have to wonder what they will do to introduce air. Will they have some sort of plenum in the drive that harnesses enough air pressure from the spinning stack? Or are we going to have to hook up an air hose to our drives some day? In air bearings today constant air pressure must be maintained or the result is an unseemly crash. Not good on your data ya know? PS: I got some feedback that Al liked your post very much. He is getting over 250 emails a day. Best, Stitch

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