Abstract
The disk take-off height (or glide avalanche) is a commonly used property of the disk in disk drives. Typically, the take-off height is defined as a pure disk property, influenced by the disk surface morphology and topography. However, at increasingly low slider flying heights, the take-off height also is strongly coupled with the slider air-bearing design. The flying height at which the interference exceeds a certain threshold is called the effective take-off height of the head-disk interface. We have determined that, the width of the slider trailing edge and slider dynamic pitch have a strong influence on the effective take-off height. We show that the head-disk durability is directly proportional to the effective take-off height. Therefore, the effective take-off height must be considered as one of the critical parameters in designing reliable disk drives.
