Adjusting seek current profile on the fly

摘要

A hard disk drive that determines a saturation current of a voice coil motor (VCM) during the acceleration portion of a seek operation, and uses the information to advantageously adjust current profile for subsequent portion of the seek. One example of determining the saturation current is utilization of the peak value of the saturated acceleration current whose magnitude depends on operating conditions such as temperature and supply voltage. Traditional hard disk drives use predetermined seek current profiles that are formed conservatively to account for such variations in the available current to the VCM, at the expense of sacrificing some seek performance. By determining the available current for each seek operation, the current profile can be adjusted on the fly so as to improve the seek performance.