An actuator latch mechanism of a hard disk drive (HDD) includes a latch lever and a magnetic latch carried by the latch lever. The latch lever is mounted to a base of the HDD so as to be rotatable and prevents an actuator arm from rotating from a position, at which a read/write head carried by the actuator arm is parked, to a read/write position at which the read/write head is located over a recording surface of a disk. A bobbin on which a VCM coil is provided extends from a rear end of the actuator arm. A permanent magnet of the VCM is fixed to the base as juxtaposed with the bobbin. The magnetic latch is carried by an arm of the latch lever and interacts with the (magnetic field generated by) the permanent magnet of the VCM to generate a net force which cause the latch lever to latch the actuator arm in place when current is not being supplied to the VCM coil, and interacts with both the (magnetic field generated by) the permanent magnet of the VCM and (the electromagnetic field generated by) the VCM coil when current is supplied to the VCM coil to produce a net force that causes the latch lever to release the actuator arm.