Disk drive employing power source modulation for reducing power consumption

摘要

A disk drive includes a disk having data tracks including servo sectors and data regions disposed between the servo sectors. A transducer head writes data to and reads data from the data regions and reads servo information from the servo sectors. A spindle motor rotates the disk. A spindle motor driver provides current to the spindle motor. A track-following controller is responsive to the servo information for causing the transducer head to remain on track. A microprocessor performs a power-saving idle operation of causing the spindle motor driver to sequentially (1) provide no current to the spindle motor for at least one disk revolution and (2) provide current to the spindle motor for at least one disk revolution. The power-saving idle operation is performed while the track-following controller causes the transducer head to remain on track for multiple disk revolutions. The power-saving idle operation is typically performed during an idle state of the disk drive to reduce power consumed by the disk drive while permitting fast recovery from the idle state to read and write operations.