A method of scanning for writing a pattern on a surface, comprising: providing a scanning beam comprised of a plurality of independently addressable sub-beams; scanning the surface with said scanning beam plurality of times, said sub-beams scanning the surface side-by-side in the cross-scan direction, each said sub-beam being modulated to reflect information to be written; and overlapping the beams such that all written areas of the surface are written on during at least two scans.
