Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is emerging as an essential tool in hard drive industry. Partnering with leading hard drive manufacturers, critical inline AFM solutions have been developed and successfully adopted for media, slider, and wafer fab manufacturing. Designed and optimized for metrology consideration, the new AFM is a significant departure from a piezotube-based AFM which suffers from poor repeatability and accuracy due to the intrinsic background curvature and its destructive scan mode. In measuring the Pole-Tip Recession (PTR), we found that non-contact AFM, rather than tapping mode AFM, is a critical requirement for accurate measurement of PTR since the impact from tapping force can depress the pole tip region and make PTR values appear larger than they actually are. Combined with throughput-efficient programmable data density, the new automated AFM constitute of a production scalable metrology solution in control of slider manufacturing processes. We also developed automatic defect review AFM that automatically locates and images defects during media and substrate manufacturing. Here, a much extended tip life by the non-contact AFM proved to be crucial in effective defect finding and cost-saving therein. In addition, the design concept of the new AFM was utilized to image undercut structures and their sidewalls by intentionally changing the angle of the z scanner, enabling a range of new process controls for wafer fab manufacturing.