Heads Slider with No Topography

[Jared]

So here is something I've never seen before, perhaps some of you have. I've got a 500Gb Seagate SSHD here which was clicking. When I open it I find traces of dust on the platters & top cover. I decided to try cleaning the read/write heads as they all seemed to be attached and looked OK to the naked eye. When I look under the microscope I see that three of the four heads have normal looking topography, which you can see in this picture from after I cleaned them up a bit:


However, one slider is completely smooth with no surface topography at all as you can see in this picture:


Anyone else ever seen this? I'm assuming that the platter surface was not used, and likely this is the cause of the dust inside the drive.

 

[LarrySabo]

Weird. I'm baffled by the design of sliders and how it affects their aerodynamic performance, and how they came up with a particular design. It's anything but intuitive.

 

[pclab]

This kind of stuff makes us scratch our heads and grow white hair .

Have you checked Larry's picture?? ahahahhaha

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Humm,
Did i see something ,According to me that head has scratched the platter and is now smooth ,Thats the reason of so much dust in this drive .Specially that Head In Second Picture ,The First Picture Does Look All Fine

 

[Jared]

I've seen plenty of scratched platter cases and the sliders are usually full of grime. This thing is actually a smooth polished surface, almost mirror finish. Even the color appears a bit different than the other sliders. I really think it was just an empty placeholder for an unused platter surface.

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Jared ,
Check Second Picture ,This head is full of platter dust

 

[Jared]

The whole drive was full of platter dust, that's not what I'm debating. This thing doesn't look like it ever had any topography. It's just totally smooth, and while it's hard to see in the pictures, it's a visibly different looking piece than the other sliders. There's no way it's just sanded smooth. I've seen platters gouged really deep, and never seen a slider totally polished smooth like this.

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

The whole drive was full of platter dust, that's not what I'm debating. This thing doesn't look like it ever had any topography. It's just totally smooth, and while it's hard to see in the pictures, it's a visibly different looking piece than the other sliders. There's no way it's just sanded smooth. I've seen platters gouged really deep, and never seen a slider totally polished smooth like this.

Noted,
In pic i was seeing maxplatter debris on that exact head hence i got confused