Copyright © 2011 SciRes. ENG Heat Source Analysis of Hard Disk Drives with Different Wall Conditions using Infrared System

Increasing performance parameters of hard disk drive (HDD) such as higher capacity and faster data access speed with decreasing physical size make HDD more susceptible to thermal effects. Contact temperature measurement using thermocouple is not suitable for the rotating platter of HDD. Heat analysis using simula-tion software requires accurate initial parameter setting such as thermal (initial & boundary) conditions of certain regions. Temperature measurement using infrared (IR) system avoids these limitations; it is non-contact, responsive and does not require initial parameter setting. Thermal pattern distribution can be studied from the thermal images. However, emissivity of the target has to be known and calibration of the system is essential for accurate temperature reading. This paper showed that temperature within the HDD increases with ambient temperature and time, but the thermal distribution pattern in the HDD was not af-fected by different ambient temperatures. Three wall boundary conditions were conducted to study the ther-mal distribution pattern in the HDD. A solution was then proposed based on the results obtained from the experiments to improve the heat transfer rate and steady state temperature, and reduce the detrimental effects from high thermal generation in future prototypes. Another important finding was that the averaged temper-ature of the head cap was generally higher compared to that of the disk, as the spindle motor is the primar