A method of design of a magnetic recording slider and sensor geometry is disclosed which allows a magneto-resistive recording element to achieve a significantly reduced physical and magnetic spacing with a rigid magnetic recording disk in a disk drive, without resulting in thermal transients caused by sensor/disk contacts. The method utilizes pseudo-contact slider technology with an intentionally recessed MR sensor pole tip and alumina region. The reduced spacing achieved by pseudo-contact recording is significant compared to the spacing loss incurred by the proposed precision of the MR recording element, resulting in a net reduction in head medium magnetic spacing.