Embodiments in accordance with the present invention improve the head
characteristic and avoid collisions between a head element section and a
recording disk. A hard disk drive according to an embodiment of the
present invention performs TFC (Thermal Fly height Control) to adjust the
clearance between the head element section and recording disk by means of
thermal expansion. A head slider includes a TFC heater. The hard disk
drive detects its acceleration and controls the TFC heater in accordance
with the detected acceleration, thereby reducing the probability of
collision between the head element section and recording disk. Further,
the hard disk drive detects residual vibration prevailing after impact
application. The heater turns back ON when the residual vibration becomes
lower than a reference level.