It is estimated that over 90% of all new information produced in the world is being stored on magnetic media, mostly on hard disk drive. A failure of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) may cause serious data loss and catastrophic consequences. From the field-gathered disk replacement data, the annual disk replacement rate typically exceeds 1%, with 2-4% common and up to 13% observed in some systems. Recently, most HDD manufacturers have the objective that increases the recording density to 1TB/in2, which requires the magnetic spacing to be reduced to sub nanometer and the track pitch to be decreased to 40nm. All of these result in the HDD suffering great challenges in reliability.
From literature, the key vital failures affecting HDD reliability include:
The dominant failure modes are related to head disk interface and head stack assembly. The physical shock, high temperature and high humidity, and pressure are the most important environmental factors influencing HDD’s reliability.
It is required an in-depth research on the mechanisms of head disk interface and head stack assembly degradation influencing on HDD reliability that not only can help customers prevent data loss and make strategies for data backup, but also can benefit manufacturers by the relative parts screening skill and improve the overall performance of HDD. That should enhance the further development of high capacity with high reliability.
