US 12,217,778 B1
Adjusting a skew angle and lateral position of a tape head to reduce track placement errors
Simeon Furrer, Altdorf (CH); Luzius Kronig, Zürich (CH); and Mark Alfred Lantz, Adliswil (CH)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Mar. 20, 2024, as Appl. No. 18/611,293.
Int. Cl. G11B 5/588 (2006.01)
CPC G11B 5/588 (2013.01) 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
10. A tape drive to read and write to a tape medium, comprising:
a tape head having servo readers and a plurality of data writers between the servo readers; and
a tape head controller for controlling the tape head to write to data tracks on the tape medium between servo patterns, wherein the tape head controller performs operations, the operations comprising:
rotating the tape head at a nominal skew with respect to the tape medium to position the servo readers in the servo patterns, wherein the data writers are located in a first plane of the tape head and the servo readers are located in a second plane in the tape head, wherein the first and the second planes are separated by a distance;
repeatedly determining a skew angle, comprising the nominal skew adjusted by a delta angle, at which to rotate the tape head to position the servo readers in the servo patterns;
repeatedly determining a lateral position error based on the distance and the delta angle; and
repeatedly adjusting a lateral position of the tape head using the lateral position error to position the data writers in target data track locations at which to write data.