Humidity influences the tribological performance of the head-disk interface in magnetic data storage devices. In this work we compare the uptake of water of amorphous carbon nitride (a-CN(x)) films, widely used as protective overcoats in computer disk drive systems, with fullerene-like carbon nitride (FL-CN(x)) and amorphous carbon (a-C) films. Films with thickness in the range 10-300 run were deposited on quartz crystal substrates by reactive DC magnetron sputtering. A quartz crystal microbalance placed in a vacuum chamber was used to measure the water adsorption. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) has been used to correlate water adsorption with film microstructure and surface defects (dangling bonds). Measurements indicate that the amount of adsorbed water is highest for the pure a-C films and that the FL-CN(x) films adsorbed less than a-CN(x). EPR data correlate the lower water adsorption on FL-CN(x) films with a possible lack of dangling bonds on the film surface. To provide additional insight into the atomic structure of defects in the FL-CN(x), a-CN(x) and a-C compounds, we performed first-principles calculations within the framework of Density Functional Theory. Emphasis was put on the energy cost for formation of vacancy defects and dangling bonds in relaxed systems. Cohesive energy comparison reveals that the energy cost formation for dangling bonds in different configurations is considerably higher in FL-CN(x) than for the amorphous films. These simulations thus confirm the experimental results showing that dangling bonds are much less likely in FL-CN(x) than in a-CN(x) and a-C films. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.