A magnetic recording disk having a non laser zone texturing (LZT) band in the contact-start-stop (CSS) zone. The width of the non-LZT band in the CSS zone may be greater than the width of a read and/or write element of a head and less than the width of a center pad on the head in order to prevent contact between the read and/or write element and the CSS zone's textured surface. The width of the non-LZT band may also be designed to account for head skew angle and positioning error due to movement of a suspension arm supporting the head.