BACKGROUND

Electronic devices provide many services to modern society. These services enable an electronic device to provide entertainment, assist with scientific research and development, and provide many modern-day conveniences. Many of these services create or use data, which the electronic device stores. This data may include digital media such as books or movies, algorithms that execute complex simulations, personal user data, applications, and so forth. To avoid exceeding data storage limits, it is beneficial to increase the data storage capacity of the electronic device and avoid deleting data, limiting services, or purchasing additional external storage devices.

Many electronic devices use media drives to store data on disks, such as a hard-disk drive. Generally, the data of each disk is organized along concentric tracks of magnetic media in which individual bits of the data are written. To accommodate greater amounts of user data, data densities per media disk have increased substantially, shrinking physical geometries of both the tracks and bits written on the magnetic media. In some cases, track and bit sizes have shrunk such that a write head of a hard-disk drive is much larger than the individual data bits it writes on the magnetic media of the disk. The larger relative size of the write head can cause issues when writing magnets to the storage media, particularly when current of the write head ramps up and remains at a high level to write long magnets, such as for a string of consecutive ones or zeros. This not only consumes extra power to continuously or repeatedly overwrite magnet portions with a same polarity but can also degrade data bits of neighboring tracks with excess magnetic fields induced by the continuously applied write current.

SUMMARY

This summary is provided to introduce subject matter that is further described in the Detailed Description and Drawings. Accordingly, this Summary should not be considered to describe essential features nor used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

In some aspects, a pulse-based writer of magnetic storage media implements a method that determines that a string of data bits having a same polarity corresponds to a magnet longer than a threshold associated with a magnetic media writer. The method includes inserting, into the string of data bits, at least one transition to a polarity opposite to the same polarity of the string of data bits. The method then transmits, to the magnetic media writer, the string of data bits including the at least one transition to cause a write head of the writer to pulse while writing the magnet corresponding to the string of bits. By so doing, the pulse-based writer may write magnets (e.g., long magnets) to the magnetic storage media more efficiently and with less degradation to data bits written on neighboring tracks of the magnetic storage media.

In other aspects, an apparatus comprises an interface to receive data from a host, a disk of magnetic storage media to store the data, a magnetic media writer configured to write the data to the magnetic storage media as data bits, and a pulse-based writer. The pulse-based writer is configured to determine that a string of the data bits having a same polarity corresponds to a magnet longer than a threshold associated with the magnetic media writer. The pulse-based writer inserts, into the string of the data bits, at least one transition to a polarity opposite to the same polarity of the string of the data bits. The string of the data bits, including the at least one transition, is transmitted by the pulse-based writer to the magnetic media writer to cause a write head of the writer to pulse while writing the magnet to the magnetic storage media of the disk.

In yet other aspects, a System-on-Chip (SoC) is described that includes an interface to a host from which data is received, an interface to a magnetic media writer of the magnetic storage media, and a pulse-based writer that is implemented at least partially in hardware. The pulse-based writer configured to determine that a string of data bits having a same polarity corresponds to a magnet longer than a threshold associated with the magnetic media writer. The pulse-based writer inserts, into the string of data bits, at least one transition to a polarity opposite to the same polarity of the string of data bits. The pulse-based writer then transmits, to the magnetic media writer, the string of data bits including the at least one transition to cause a write head of the magnetic media writer to pulse while writing the magnet to the magnetic storage media.

The details of one or more implementations are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the following description. Other features and advantages will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.

