REDUCING DEAD-TRACKING IN RECORDING SYSTEMS

摘要

A self-clocking magnetic recording system, such as a magnetic tape system, is subject to dead tracking (i.e., loss of signals from a track on the media). During dead-tracking, the variable frequency clock VFC) associated with the dead track is synchronized to the data frequency of an adjacent operating track to thereby maintain the VFC of the dead track at approximately the desired frequency. This action enables resyncing the VFC to its track. Upon successful detection of data being read from a given dead track, synchronization of the given VFC is returned to the given track.