Western Digital Technologies Assigned Four Patents

Tape drive with head-gimbal assembly and contact plate
Western Digital Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,087,786) developed by Brown, Diane L., and Olson, Trevor W., San Jose, CA, for a “tape drive with head-gimbal assembly and contact plate.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”The present disclosure generally relates to a tape embedded drive having a head-gimbal assembly (HGA) and a contact plate. By using a support structure or contact plate beneath the tape, read and write heads can be designed to be narrower than the tape. The support structure or contact plate can stretch or relax the tape so that the spacing between servo tracks on the tape corresponds to the servo to servo spacing on the head. HGAs, which are narrower than the tape, can fly over the tape and read data from and write data to the tape. The HGA can have a single head or multiple heads. Additionally, multiple independent head assemblies can also be used for reading from and writing to the same tape.”

The patent application was filed on April 30, 2020 (Appl. No.16/864,050).

Shielding between heads for tape drive
Western Digital Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,087,782) developed by Brown, Diane L., and Lee, Edward Hin Pong, San Jose, CA, for “shielding between heads for tape drive.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to tape drives used for magnetic recording on tapes. Tape drives use tape heads that comprise a read head, a write head, and an additional head that may be a write head or a read head. The tape head is fabricated over a common substrate with the first head being formed first, followed by a shield layer, followed by the second head, followed by another shield layer, and finally followed by the third head. Fabricating the tape head over a common substrate is cost effective. The tape head can be wired such that fewer parallel connections between the heads and bond pads are present. As such, cross-talk between the wires and noise is reduced.”

The patent application was filed on June 16, 2020 (Appl. No.16/903,253).

Tape embedded drive with HDD components
Western Digital Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,081,132) developed by Chew, David W., San Juan Capistrano, CA, for a “tape embedded drive with HDD components.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A tape embedded drive can include tape media for storing data, a first tape reel and a second tape reel, each coupled to one end of the tape media, and a head stack assembly (HSA). The HSA can include a first head assembly having at least one read head and one write head and a second head assembly having a non-operable head incapable of reading or writing. In an embodiment, the first head assembly is configured to be placed along a first side of the tape media and the second head assembly with the non-operable head is configured to be placed along a second side of the tape media opposite the first side of the tape media.”

The patent application was filed on April 24, 2020 (Appl. No.16/858,265).

Storage device employing multi-tier coding for magnetic tape
Western Digital Technologies, Inc., San Jose, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,049,520) developed by Galbraith, Richard L., Hanson, Weldon M., Rochester, MN, Burton, Derrick E., Ladera Ranch, CA, Ravindran, Niranjay, and Oboukhov, Iouri, Rochester, MN, for a “data storage device employing multi-tier coding for magnetic tape.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data storage device is disclosed comprising at least one head configured to access a magnetic tape. Data is read from the magnetic tape to generate a read signal which is processed to decode a first M blocks of low density parity check (LDPC) type codewords using a LDPC type decoder. First un-converged codewords out of the first M blocks are decoded using a first M-blocks parity, and second un-converged codewords out of the first M blocks are decoded using an erasure code.”

The patent application was filed on May 8, 2020 (Appl. No.16/870,658).