As technology moves to 600-1000 Gb/sq-in areal densities and deep sub-10 nm head-disk spacing, it is of crucial importance to prevent both the conventionally defined thermal decay and the tribologically induced decay of recorded magnetic signal. This paper reports a novel method for recording and visualizing the signature of the potential tribological decay. The details of the methodology, its working principles, and typical results obtained are presented in this work. The method is based on the introduction of a type of visualizing disks which use a layer of magneto-optical material with low Curie temperature to replace the magnetic layer used in the conventional magnetic media. The method and corresponding setup were used successfully in the visualization of potential decay caused by slider-particle-disk contact, slider-disk contact during track seeking operations, and slider-disk impact during loading and unloading operations.