An aspect of the invention can be regarded an air bearing slider for use in a disk drive including a rotatable magnetic disk. The slider includes a leading side and a trailing side. The slider further includes opposing lateral sides extending between the leading and trailing sides. The slider further includes a transducer pad disposed adjacent the trailing side. The transducer pad includes a transducer for reading and writing data from and to the magnetic disk. The slider further includes 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 includes a forward shallow etched surface, a trailing shallow etched surface extending from adjacent the trailing side toward the leading side, and a side pad air bearing surface disposed between and above the forward and trailing shallow etched surfaces.