US Patent Issued to Western Digital Technologies on Sept. 16 for "Thermal fly height calibration for data storage device" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,417,786, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to Western Digital Technologies Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Thermal fly height calibration for data storage device" was invented by Sukumar Rajauria (San Jose, Calif.) and Tan Trinh (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A Data Storage Device (DSD) includes a disk and a slider. A change in distance between the slider and the disk is determined by applying a first voltage to the slider that increases an electrostatic force between the slider and the disk. The change in distance is approximately the same across a surface of the slider facing the disk. A first power supplied to the heating ...