Study of perpendicular AME media in a linear tape drive

The magnetic recording performance of perpendicularly oriented advanced metal evaporated (AME) media is studied in a linear tape drive. A modified evaporation process produces the perpendicular orientation, which substantially reduces the writing asymmetry of obliquely oriented AME media in a linear recording environment. While the read back signal exhibits characteristics of perpendicular media, the timing-based servo signal in the drive enables track-following performance with a 1 sigma position error signal (PES) of 0.2μm. The read channel correctable error rate at the LTO Gen 4 operating point is 106 in both the forward and backward directions and the durability of the tape exceeds 100 000 passes without signal degradation. © 2009 IEEE.