Multichannel magnetic tape system with optical tracking servo

摘要

The system magnetic tape (100) has linear data tracks defined in a magnetic storage layer (104) on one tape side and optical servo pattern (106) on the oher tape side. The servo features are read by the optical servo transducer to generate servo feedback signal to aid track following lateral tape motion. The tape system head positioner mechanism is corrected by an optical servo pattern (106) on the rear side of the tape. The optical pickup head senses instantaneous tape position information from one of the servo track patterns. The information is used by the fine head position control loop to correct positional offset or position error.