Hard disk drives for digital information storage were first introduced by IBM in 1957. The early drives used inductive heads with machined ferrite cores and wire wound sense coils. Thin film inductive heads made their debut in the early 1980s.Demand for ever increasing recording densities soon led to the development of thin film magneto-resistive (MR) heads. IBM introduced the first disk drives with MR heads in 1991, and usage of MR heads has increased steadily ever since. This paper presentsa brief description of MR heads, and then focuses on unique reliability issues in these heads and the packaging and integration of MR heads into disk drives.
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