Contributed Paper
Vibration Characteristics of Hard Disk
Drives with Different Internal Air Pressures
Z. He, V. Venkataramanan, C. Y. Ng, and E. H. Ong, Member, IEEE
Abstract-Hard disk drive (HDD) performance
and reliability at different environments are the
interests and concerns ofHDD researchers, engineers
and consumers. This paper reports the experimental
investigation of HDD vibration characteristics with
different internal air pressures. Experiments are
done by placing the HDD samples inside an altitude
chamber and the vibrations are measured using a
Laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) and aU-in-one
(AIO) motor tester. The disk drive read/write test,
vibration spectrum of actuator & suspension tip and
disk flutter measurements reveal that the air
pressure significantly affects the vibration behaviors
of hard disk drive components and the system
performances.
Index Terms-Air pressure, fluid dynamics, hard
disk drive, vibration.
I. INTRODUCTION
As ideal data storage devices, hard disk drives
have been extensively utilized in personal
computers and enterprise servers, as well as a wide
range of consumer electronic devices. These
devices are generally used at normal atmospheric
pressure. However, HDDs are increasingly used at
higher altitudes other than normal atmospheric
pressure. In this case, what are flow-induced
vibrations of a head suspension assembly in a hard
disk drive at different air pressures? Few
researches and literatures address these questions.
As the applications of HDDs getting wider and the
capacity of HDDs getting higher, the performance
and reliability of hard disk drives at different
environments, become the interests and concerns
of researchers and HDD players. The paper mainly
investigates the flow-induced vibrations of the
head suspension assembly of HDDs with different
internal air pressures.
Flow-induced vibrations of head suspension
assembly have been recognized as a major track
misregistration (TMR) source in hard disk drives.
In recent years, there have been numerous
researches discussing this topic. These
investigations can be categorized as numerical
modeling and simulation using computed fluid
Authors are with A*Star, Data Storage Institute, 5,
Engineering Drive I, (Off Kent Ridge Crescent, NUS),
Singapore 117608.
Corresponding author: Z. He (email: HE Zhimin@dsi.a-
star.edu.sg: Tel: +65 68748516; Fax: +65 67772053).
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dynamics (CFD) techniques and experimental
measurements using LDV. These studies provide
valuable information to the present study.
The present investigation measures the vibration
characteristics of hard disk drives at different air
pressures by placing the HDDs inside an altitude
chamber. The disk drive read/write test, head
suspension assembly vibration test, actuator arm
vibration test, disk vibration test are performed
and motor performances are evaluated as well.
II. DISK DRIVE READIWRITE TEST
Before the vibration test, we perform the data
transfer rate (Read/Write) test of a high end
enterprise hard disk drive at different air pressures.
It is found that when the air pressure is decreased
to 400 mbar, the hard disk drive fails and the
media is significantly scratched. The test shows
that the hard disk drive still works at 466mbar.
However, Figure I shows that the throughput,
which represents the ratio of data rate at a
specified air pressure to that at normal atmospheric
pressure, drops about 80% at the outer disk, and
then becomes more stable as the arm move
towards the inner disk. The data transfer rate
(Read/Write) at the other two tested pressures, 822
mbar, 644 mbar, do not show any clear differences
as compared with normal atmospheric pressure
and room temperature.
Fig. I Data transfer rate (Read) responses at I bar and
466mbar
III. HARD DISK DRIVE VIBRATION
TEST WITH DIFFERENT INTERNAL
AIR PRESSURES
According to the read/write data testing results,
we measured the flow-induced vibrations of the
same enterprise hard disk drive as the air pressures
changed from I bar to 600 mbar. Figure 2 shows
 Contributed Paper

the experimental setup of the vibration the motor. This leads to less mechanical and
measurement inside the altitude chamber. To
effectively eliminate the low frequency signal
drift, a closed-loop system with proximate time-
optimal servo control (PTOS) is adopted to
position the actuator assembly. The PES RRO and
NRRO at the measured suspension tip can be
calculated with M rows of data composed of n
measured PES from sector number o. The PSD of
PES is calculated by averaging each PSD of PES
data row as in (1).
S(f) = _1
M
f
1=1
SI(f) (1)
Fig. 2 Experimental setup of the vibration measurement of an
Figure 3 shows the power spectrum of NRRO at enterprise drive inside an altitude chamber
the hard drive's nominal rotation speed 15,000 Poww8pectrumclNRRO011!1,01Orpm

rpm at the air pressures as 1 bar, 800 mbar and 600

mbar under the closed-loop bandwidth of 2 kHz. -J __ ./... __ 1__ --I __ .I.- __ 1__
I I I I I I
Table 1 shows the standard deviation of the
.,===
I 1 I I I I
I~ ~ I I I
measured NRRO for different altitudes and speeds. 1bar
;--t---I--
f I I I I 1
The results show that NRRO only increases I
I
I
I
I
1
I
I
I
I
I
I
--, - - r - -,- - , - - r - -1- -
slightly when the speed is increased from 7,200 I I I 1 I I
rpm to 15,000 rpm, but the NRRO increases I
I
I
I
I
r
I
I
I
I
I
I
-1- - , - -1- - 1- - , - -I--
significantly when the air pressure is decreased to I r I I r I

600 mbar. This is due to the decrease in air I I I t I I

7000 8000 8000 10000

viscosity when the air pressure is decreased, and
hence, air turbulences at boundary layers are
increased. The decrease in air density and viscosity
reduces air damping, and thus increases the
vibration amplitude. Even though lower air density
and pressure may induce less air dynamic force,
the air damping and turbulences may dominate the
vibration behavior of the actuator assembly. Also,
at lower air pressure, the head flying condition is
degraded, as the proper air pressure between the
slider and media is necessary to maintain a stable
flying height. The degradation of flying condition
causes the slider contacting with the media and
thus the motion/vibrations of the disk are
transferred to the actuator assembly. It is noted
that the NRRO has components up to 2 kHz,
which is the bandwidth of the closed-loop system.
Thus all the components are input torque
disturbances caused by the air-flow. These
frequency components are significantly amplified
at lower air pressures.
TABLEr
STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF NRRO
Speed in Standard deviation ofNRRO in run
rpm I bar 800mbar 600mbar
7200 8.8 19.37 53.4
10000 10.6 20.58 40.87
15000 12.53 23.7 50.76
The motor performances, disk vibrations, and a
dummy actuator arm lateral vibration without
slider flying over the media at different air
pressures are measured. Measurements using
DSI's AIO tester shows that at lower air pressure,
less power and input current are needed to rotate
Fig. 3 NRRO spectrum of the measured point (suspension tip)
under different air pressures
Vibration test on the disk and a dummy actuator
arm also reveals that the lower the air pressure, the
higher the vibration amplitude. From all
measurements, it was found that the low frequency
components at 1-2 kHz, are significantly
amplified at a lower air pressure. These frequency
components are due to the external disturbances,
such as noise etc.
IV. CONCI;.USIONS
The decrease in air pressure degrades the slider
flying condition. It also induces higher amplitude
of flow-induced vibrations. This applies to
actuator suspension assembly with and without
head flying as well as disks.
V. ACKNOWLEDGEMET
Some valuable discussions with Drs. Zhang
Qide, Lin Wuzhong, Yang Jiaping, Tan Cheng
Peng, and Mr. Yopie Adrianto are acknowledged.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Aruga, M. Suwa, K. Shimizu, and T. Watanabe, "A
study on positioning error caused by flow induced vibration
using helium-filled hard disk drives", IEEE Trans. Magn., Vol.
43,~o.9,pp.3750-3755,Sep~ber2007.
[2] T. Egnchi, "Aerodynamic damping on vibration of
rotating disks and effect of shroud and top cover", HL-Ol, pp.
1399, IEEE Intermag 2008, Madrid, Spain.

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