When I last read up on this, which admittedly was over a decade ago, head parking was just a matter of locating the heads over an unused region of the platters.

When I last read up on this, which admittedly was over a decade ago, head parking was just a matter of locating the heads over an unused region of the platters. The head still goes through a landing and takeoff cycle, so the head still sees physical contact. It's just avoiding doing it over the data portion of the platters.