Patent ID: 7522371

Claim:
A method for writing a longitudinal servo track on a magnetic storage medium, comprising: moving a magnetic storage medium in a longitudinal direction relative to a first recording element and a second recording element, wherein the first recording element and the second recording element are aligned along the longitudinal direction and are oriented at different azimuth angles; generating pulses in the first recording element and the second recording element to write servo frames forming a servo track, wherein within each servo frame the first recording element writes a tone field of repeating servo marks and the second recording element overwrites a portion of the tone field with a mid-frame synchronization mark such that the number of servo marks in the tone field of each servo frame along the longitudinal direction of the servo track before the mid-frame synchronization mark and after the mid-frame synchronization mark varies with lateral position, wherein the first recording element writes a start-frame synchronization mark associated with a beginning of each servo frame and the position of the mid-frame synchronization mark written by the second recording element is controlled by reading the tone field and start-frame synchronization mark written by the first recording element.