Patent ID: 7019945

Claim:
An air bearing slider for use in a disk drive including a rotatable magnetic disk, the slider comprising: a leading side and a trailing side, the trailing side including a trailing edge; opposing lateral sides extending between the leading and trailing sides; a transducer pad disposed adjacent the trailing side, the transducer pad including a transducer for reading and writing data from and to the magnetic disk; and a pair of pressurized side pads each respectively disposed laterally between the transducer pad and a respective one of the lateral sides, each side pad including: a forward shallow etched surface; a trailing shallow etched surface extending from the trailing edge of the trailing side towards the leading side; and a side pad air bearing surface disposed between and above the forward and trailing shallow etched surfaces; wherein the forward shallow etched surfaces each including an outer edge disposed away from each other which is slanted with respect to a longitudinal axis of the slider.