According to an embodiment of the present invention, a slider design is presented that provides improved protection for the head/sensor of the slider. In one embodiment, the design of the slider is such that ESD protection is provided during the slider wafer process, the "back-end" processes (e.g., when the completed slider/head is incorporated into an HGA), and during operation in a disk drive or the like. In this embodiment, a conductive film is provided that surrounds the insulating-material slider substrate. The conductive film provides a grounding path during the wafer fabrication processes. This conductive layer may be further patterned during head fabrication to provide a ground path for back-end fabrication processes. A conductive stripe may be added for discharging debris in the slider-to-disk interface.