Patent ID: 7876516

Claim:
A method for writing data to a multi-track data tape, comprising: receiving a stream of user data symbols, the stream comprising at least one data set; segmenting each data set into a plurality S of unencoded subdata sets, each subdata set comprising an array having K 2 rows and K 1 columns; for each unencoded subdata set: generating N 1 -K 1 C1-parity bytes for each row of a subdata set and appending the C1-parity bytes to the end of the row to form an encoded C1 codeword having a length N 1 ; and generating N 2 -K 2 C2-parity bytes for each column of the subdata set and appending the C2-parity bytes to the end of the column to form an encoded C2 codeword having a length N 2 , whereby an encoded subdata set is generated having N 2 C1 codewords; from the S encoded subdata sets, forming a plurality of (S×N 2 ) partial codeword objects (PCOs), each comprising a header and a C1 codeword; mapping each PCO onto a logical data track according to information within the header of the PCO; on each logical data track, merging adjacent PCOs to form codeword objects (COs), each comprising at least two adjacent PCOs; modulation encoding the COs and adding synchronization patterns to obtain T synchronized COs, where T is the number of concurrent active tracks on the data tape; and writing T synchronized COs simultaneously to the data tape.