Particulate contamination is known to be a significant cause of failures of removable storage media. In this work, the effect of particles on the surface damage of removable hard disk media was investigated. The particles of different materials and size were introduced to the Head Disk Interface (HDI) using a particle injection system. It was round that the particles of particulate size and property serious damaged the media. This study showed that cleaning pad is effective for reducing particle contamination, except fer the particles of specific size and property. As a means to remove the particles of specific sire. the concept of using a stepped taper at the leading edge of the slider is proposed.