Abstract: The present invention is a method for defect locating marking and analysis of thin film hard disks. Initially, the hard disk is disposed in a disk drive and the disk is formatted with sector identification lines and data written into data tracks. During the data writing process a disk surface defect is identified by its sector, track and byte location. The hard disk is then marked such that the defect can be located at a later time. The erased bands aid in later locating the defect. After the defect locating erasures have been completed for each defect found on the disk, the disk is removed from the hard disk drive for further analysis. The disk is then placed on the stage of a microscope and ferromagnetic fluid is applied to the disk in order to make the erased tracks visible. The ferromagnetic fluid is applied out to the end of the track erasure of the track that includes the defect, without application of ferromagnetic fluid to the defect itself.