The present invention relates to data storage systems, and more particularly, this invention relates to a magnetic head and system implementing the same, where the head has offset arrays capable of reading data written in different storage formats.
In magnetic storage systems, data is read from and written onto magnetic recording media utilizing magnetic transducers. Data is written on the magnetic recording media by moving a magnetic recording transducer to a position over the media where the data is to be stored. The magnetic recording transducer then generates a magnetic field, which encodes the data into the magnetic media. Data is read from the media by similarly positioning the magnetic read transducer and then sensing the magnetic field of the magnetic media. Read and write operations may be independently synchronized with the movement of the media to ensure that the data can be read from and written to the desired location on the media.
An important and continuing goal in the data storage industry is that of increasing the density of data stored on a medium. For tape storage systems, that goal has led to increasing the track and linear bit density on recording tape, and decreasing the thickness of the magnetic tape medium. However, the development of small footprint, higher performance tape drive systems has created various problems in the design of a tape head assembly for use in such systems.
In a tape drive system, magnetic tape is moved over the surface of the tape head at high speed. Usually the tape head is designed to minimize the spacing between the head and the tape. The spacing between the magnetic head and the magnetic tape is crucial so that the recording gaps of the transducers, which are the source of the magnetic recording flux, are in near contact with the tape to effect writing sharp transitions, and so that the read element is in near contact with the tape to provide effective coupling of the magnetic field from the tape to the read element.
The quantity of data stored on a magnetic tape may be increased by increasing the number of data tracks across the tape. More tracks are made possible by reducing feature sizes of the readers and writers, such as by using thin-film fabrication techniques and MR sensors. However, for various reasons, the feature sizes of readers and writers cannot be arbitrarily reduced, and so factors such as lateral tape motion transients and tape lateral expansion and contraction (e.g., perpendicular to the direction of tape travel) must be balanced with reader/writer sizes that provide acceptable written tracks and readback signals. One issue limiting areal density is misregistration caused by tape lateral expansion and contraction. Tape width can vary by up to about 0.1% due to expansion and contraction caused by changes in humidity, tape tension, temperature, aging etc. This is often referred to as tape dimensional instability (TDI).
If the tape is written in one environment and then read back in another, the TDI may prevent the spacing of the tracks on the tape from precisely matching the spacing of the reading elements during readback. In current products, the change in track spacing due to TDI is small compared to the size of the written tracks and is part of the tracking budget that is considered when designing a product. As the tape capacity increases over time, tracks are becoming smaller and TDI is becoming an increasingly larger portion of the tracking budget and this is a limiting factor for growing areal density.