Abstract: A glide head assembly that can be used to certify disks of hard disk drives. The assembly includes a glide head that is coupled to a suspension arm. The assembly further has a contact sensor coupled to the head. The contact sensor includes a center plate and four beams. The beams are coupled to corresponding sensor elements. Contact between the head and the disk will cause the beams to deflect. The deflection of the beams is sensed by the sensor elements and processed to detect head/disk contact. The number, orientation and amplitude of the beams that are deflected can be processed to determine the pitch and roll angles of the glide head.