The implementations disclosed herein allow for formation of a magnetoresistive (MR) sensor shield that shields against both down track and cross-track interference. The shield can be formed in a single deposition step. In one implementation of the disclosed technology, a tail portion of the shield is eliminated by including a non-magnetic material adjacent to opposite sides of a middle portion of the sensor stack.

A first set of components (e.g., recording head components) is formed on a first wafer at a first pattern density. A second set of components is formed on a second wafer at a second pattern density that is less than half that of the first pattern density. The first and second sets of components are joined to form respective subassemblies (e.g., recording head subassemblies).

A method of forming a read head is described where a Tunneling Magnetoresistive (TMR) stack of layers comprised of a free layer (FL) and having sidewalls separated by a cross-track width is formed on a bottom shield. In subsequent steps, a first insulation layer and longitudinal biasing layer are formed on the sidewalls and bottom shield. After a TMR sensor backside is formed that exposes the bottom shield, a second insulation layer and permanent magnet (PM) layer are deposited on exposed portions of the bottom shield. Thereafter, the PM layer magnetization is initialized in a direction that adjusts FL bias point, and shifts sensor asymmetry (Asym) closer to 0% for individual heads at slider or Head Gimbal Assembly level to provide a significant improvement in device yield. Asym is adjusted using different initialization schemes and initialization directions. With individual heads, initialization direction is selected based on a prior asymmetry measurement.