Method and for wide track erasure in a hard disk drive

A hard disk drive is disclosed with a slider including a wide track eraser for erasing neighboring tracks and the servo patterning around a track on the accessed disk surface. Using the wide track eraser reduces the time to erase a disk surface by at least a factor of N, where N is at least 4, and may preferably be successively larger to at least 64. Embodiments include the slider, a head gimbal assembly, a main flex circuit, an integrated circuit for the main flex circuit for stimulating the wide track eraser, a head stack assembly including the main flex circuit coupling through the head gimbal assembly to the wide track eraser, a control circuit, and a processor within the control circuit controlling the stimulus of the wide track eraser to erase part or all of a disk surface.