Appeal No. 96-1209
Application 08/168,805
The invention pertains to minimizing damage to disk
drives if and when the disk drive is dropped. More
particularly, shock-induced damage to the disk drive is
minimized by sensing net acceleration of the drive to
determine if it is similar to a
free falling object and then, if the acceleration so
indicates, determining if the net acceleration event occurs
for a sufficient amount of time to indicate that the drive is
falling, rather than merely being subjected to some external
vibration. If both the acceleration and time period test are
affirmative, action is taken to prepare the disk for imminent
collision.
Representative independent claim 11 is reproduced as
follows:
11. A disk drive comprising:
a housing;
at least one storage disk rotatably connected to the
housing to spin about an axis of rotation;
at least one actuator arm operably connected to the
housing to move relative to the storage disk and radially
position a read/write head across the storage disk;
an accelerometer device mounted within the housing to
measure acceleration of the disk drive as it falls along three
2
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