Head assembly and disk drive

摘要

A head assembly (24) for a disk drive having an increased resonant point in a seek direction achieves high-accuracy positioning of a magnetic head slider (26). The head assembly (24) includes a load beam (28) having a spring portion (28a) having a first thickness, and a rigid portion (28b) having a second thickness. The second thickness, which is greater than the first thickness, may be realised by affixing a reinforcing plate (44) to a portion of the load beam (28), or it may be realized by simply integrally forming the load beam (28) with two different thicknesses. A gimbal (34) is fixed to a front end portion of the load beam (28), and a head slider (26) is mounted on the gimbal (34). The gimbal (34) may be integral with the load beam (28). Preferably a plurality of signal lines are formed by printing on the load beam (28). <IMAGE>