Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention pertain to a tradeoff between reliability and performance for a disk drive. According to one embodiment, a first measurement at a first thermal fly height control (TFC) heater level that provides low reliability for a parameter and a second measurement at a second TFC heater level that provides low performance for the parameter are determined. The first measurement and the second measurement are used to determine if there is a third TFC heater level that at least satisfies a criteria for the parameter whereby the tradeoff between the reliability and the performance for the disk drive is enabled.