Your description is a much more precise way of looking at it. I was trying to reach for the same concept when I talked about fluid dynamics and the forces acting on the head cancelling out so that it rests at exactly the right distance, but I lacked the clarity to state it so neatly. Thanks!
>>> It is exceptionally challenging engineering. <<<
It's also very beautiful... When you look at something like that it's a bit like looking at a work of art - I don't know how to explain it but it is awe inspiring. I wonder how people end up working on such things... How do you get to the point where you can raise your sleeves and create a system as beautiful as this?
I don't think any one person can create a piece of engineering as complex as a modern day hard drive. There are just too many disciplines involved: Physical, electrical and embedded software engineering, applied physics, information theory for encoding the data and recovering from errors. But certainly a single person or group in those fields can be responsible for specific breakthroughs.
>>> It is exceptionally challenging engineering. <<<
It's also very beautiful... When you look at something like that it's a bit like looking at a work of art - I don't know how to explain it but it is awe inspiring. I wonder how people end up working on such things... How do you get to the point where you can raise your sleeves and create a system as beautiful as this?