Tribology and Mechanics of Magnetic Storage Devices

It is perhaps a little surprising that this book was ever written. Bhushan deals with the nitty gritty practicalities of making a disk drive, circa 1996. You might reasonably expect that most of the book's details have deliberately been kept proprietary by the disk manufacturers. But by whatever means, the book was published. You get a wealth of details that might take an R & D group years to learn on their own. Keep in mind that the emphasis here is on the mechanics. So don't expect a discussion of IBM's usage of the Giant Magnetoresistive effect, for example. The book should make you appreciate the incredible mechanical constraints under which disks operate. They can spin for years, with the heads not crashing into them, but separated by mere microns. Truly amazing manufacture.