Polymer-based dampening layer application to improve the operating shock tolerance of hard disk drive

Abstract This paper discusses a passive vibration control method to improve the shock tolerance of hard disk drives (HDDs) in operating condition (op-shock tolerance). Past works in improving the HDDs’ op-shock tolerance includes (i) parking the head when shock is detected, (ii) installing a lift-off limiter, (iii) structural modification of the suspension, and (iv) installing an external vibration isolation. Methods (i) and (iv) have practical issues, method (ii) works only on single shock direction, and method (iii) requires major engineering design/manufacturing work. Compared to these works, this paper proposes a method which has no practical issues and without requiring major engineering design/manufacturing work. The proposed method is to apply a polymer-based dampening layer on the backside of the baseplate with the purpose of increasing the damping ratio of the 1st bending mode of the baseplate. The location of the dampening layer on the baseplate is first determined by modal analysis and then fine-tuned by non-op-shock tests. The op-shock tolerance improvement is confirmed by op-shock tests where 2.5″ HDD with the dampening layer on the baseplate can withstand a 300G 0.5-ms shock without failure while unmodified HDD can only withstand 250G 0.5-ms shock without failure.