Detecting stray magnetic fields in a storage device

摘要

Technologies are described herein for detecting an external magnetic field affecting a magnetic storage device through use of the read/write heads of the device. The magneto-resistive resistance (“MRR”) associated with a pair of read/write heads oriented to read and write opposite recording surfaces of the storage medium. If the change in the MRR associated with the first read/write head is in an inverse direction to the change in MRR associated with the second read/write head and the change in the MRR of either read/write head exceeds a threshold, then all operations of the storage device are halted and the read/write heads are parked.

主权项

1. A method of detecting an external magnetic field affecting a storage device, the method comprising:
monitoring a resistance of a first magneto-resistive (“MR”) reader element and a second MR reader element, the first MR reader element oriented to read data from a first recording surface of a storage medium in the storage device, and the second MR reader element oriented to read data from a second recording surface opposite the first recording surface; determining whether a change in the resistance of the first MR reader element is in an inverse direction of a change in the resistance of the second MR reader element; upon determining that the change in the resistance of the first MR reader element is in an inverse direction of the change in the resistance of the second MR reader element, determining whether the change in the resistance of the first or second MR reader elements exceeds a threshold amount; and upon determining that the threshold amount is exceeded, halting operations of the storage device.