A component of a disk drive that records and retrieves data from magnetic disks. Read\\write heads are also used sometimes to record and retrieve data from magnetic tapes. In the case of disk drives the assembly consists of a head, sometimes known as a slider, and a mounting arm, known as a flexure. There are two categories of head: those used in floppy drives in which the slider is in contact with the media, and those used in ‘rigid drives’ in which the head flies above the surface of the media. The flying height of the latter depends upon the slider geometry, the flexure loading force, and the rotational speed of the disk.