A magnetic recording medium used on a record/playback device with a minimum recording wavelength or 50 nm or shorter, the magnetic recording medium including a magnetic layer that contains a spinel-type ferrite magnetic powder, the magnetic layer having an average thickness of 85 nm or smaller, and the magnetic layer having a saturation flux density of 1600 Gauss or larger and 2000 Gauss or smaller.

A magnetic recording medium is a magnetic recording medium having a tape-like shape and includes a base substrate and a magnetic layer provided on the base substrate. A plurality of data tracks can be formed in the magnetic layer, a width of a data track is 2900 nm or less, and in a case of defining, as w.sub.max and w.sub.min, a maximum value and a minimum value respectively out of average values of a width of the magnetic recording medium measured under four kinds of environment in which temperature and relative humidity are set to (10° C., 10%), (10° C., 80%), (29° C., 80%), and (45° C., 10%), w.sub.max and w.sub.min satisfy a relation of (w.sub.max−w.sub.min)/w.sub.min≤400 [ppm].

A magnetic-disk substrate has an average value of squares of inclinations that is 0.0025 or less, and a frequency at which squares of inclinations are 0.004 or more is 15% or less, in a case where samples of inclinations on a main surface are obtained at intervals of 10 nm. The main surface is configured to receive at least a magnetic recording layer thereon. The magnetic-disk substrate includes an outer circumferential end portion and an inner circumferential end portion, and the outer circumferential end portion and the inner circumferential end portion have chamfered portions.

A heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) media that has a substrate, a granular magnetic recording layer on the substrate, a carbon overcoat, and a non-magnetic seed layer between the granular magnetic recording layer and the carbon overcoat. The seed layer has a refractive index (n) of no more than 0.5 and an extinction coefficient (k) of at least 1, and a thickness no greater than 10 Angstrom. The seed layer can be at least one of Ag, Au, and Cu.

A glass for magnetic recording medium substrate is an amorphous oxide glass. In terms of mol %, SiO.sub.2 content ranges from 45 to 68%, Al.sub.2O.sub.3 from 5 to 20%, total content of SiO.sub.2 and Al.sub.2O.sub.3 60 to 80%, B.sub.2O.sub.3 from 0 to 5%, MgO from 3 to 28%, CaO from 0 to 18%, total content of BaO and SrO 0 to 2%, total content of alkali earth metal oxides from 12 to 30%, total content of alkali metal oxides from 3.5 to 15%, and at least one kind selected from the group made of Sn oxide and Ce oxide being included, a total content of Sn oxide and Ce oxide ranges from 0.05 to 2.00%, a glass transition temperature ≥625° C., a Young's modulus ≥83 GPa, a specific gravity ≤2.85, and an average linear expansion coefficient at 100 to 300° C.≥48×10.sup.−7/° C.

Various apparatuses, systems, methods, and media are disclosed to provide a magnetic recording medium with a tungsten (W) pre-seed layer. The W pre-seed layer has a higher conductance than a CrTi pre-seed layer with a similar thickness. In one embodiment, the W pre-seed layer is made of about 95 atomic percent or more of W. The W pre-seed layer has lower electrical resistivity than the CrTi pre-seed layer. As a result, the thickness of the W pre-seed layer can be reduced as compared to the thickness of a CrTi pre-seed layer if a similar conductance is to be achieved. The magnetic recording materials deposited on top of the W pre-seed layer with the reduced thickness provide comparable crystallographic orientation and recording performance to those deposited on top of a thicker CrTi pre-seed layer with a similar conductance.

The present disclosure relates to disk separator plates that include a coating to increase the water contact angle of the exterior surface of the disk separator plate so as to decrease its wettability. The present disclosure also involves hard disk drives that include such a disk separator plate and related methods of forming such a coating.

An object is to provide a magnetic recording medium having excellent traveling stability and a thin total thickness. The present technology provides a tape-shaped magnetic recording medium including: a magnetic layer; an underlayer; a base layer; and a back layer, in which a surface on a side of the magnetic layer has a kurtosis of 3.0 or more, a surface on a side of the back layer has a kurtosis of 2.0 or more, the surface on the magnetic layer side has arithmetic average roughness R.sub.a of 2.5 nm or less, the base layer includes a polyester as a main component, the magnetic recording medium has an average thickness t.sub.T of 5.6 μm or less, the magnetic recording medium includes a lubricant, the lubricant includes a fatty acid and a fatty acid ester, and a mass ratio between the fatty acid and the fatty acid ester extracted with hexane satisfies fatty acid/fatty acid ester≤0.6, and the magnetic recording medium has pores, and the pores have an average diameter of 6 nm or more and 11 nm or less when the diameters of the pores are measured in a state where the lubricant has been removed from the magnetic recording medium and the magnetic recording medium has been dried.

A plurality of configuration sets are used with a detector coupled to a decoder. A processor is coupled to the memory registers and the detector and operable to load a first one of the configuration sets into the detector. The detector to attempts detection of the bits in the digital stream for a first iteration between the detector and the decoder using the first configuration set. After the first iteration, a second one of the configuration sets is loaded into the detector. The second configuration set is different than the first configuration set. The detector to attempts detection of the bits in the digital stream for a second iteration between the detector and the decoder using the second configuration set.

According to one embodiment, a magnetic head includes a first magnetic pole, a second magnetic pole, and a stacked body provided between the first and second magnetic poles. The stacked body includes a first magnetic layer, a second magnetic layer provided between the first magnetic layer and the second magnetic pole, a third magnetic layer provided between the second magnetic layer and the second magnetic pole, a first non-magnetic layer provided between the first and second magnetic layers, a second non-magnetic layer provided between the second and third magnetic layers, a third non-magnetic layer provided between the first magnetic pole and the first magnetic layer, and a fourth non-magnetic layer provided between the third magnetic layer and the second magnetic pole. A first magnetic pole length is shorter than a second magnetic pole length. A first magnetic layer length is longer than a second magnetic layer length.