Patent ID: 7206151

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting errors in recording data on a tape medium, said apparatus comprising: a data-writing unit for writing data units to one or more tape media, and in response to an error being detected when writing data units to one or more tape media, rewriting said data units to said tape media in a rewrite operation; a write number counter for counting a number of said rewrite operations performed by said data writing unit for a single data unit; a failure determination unit that determines that a failure has occurred for writing said single data unit if said number of rewrite operations exceeds a pre-determined number; an error locating unit that stores each location of said rewrites associated with said failure with respect to said single data unit; means for determining, by statistically analyzing said locations of said writes associated with said errors as stored in said error locating unit, whether said error is an error due to a failure of a writing head or to a fault of said tape medium, wherein said means for determining determines that if said locations associated with said errors are situated along a track of said tape medium, said errors are due to said failure of said writing head, and otherwise determines that said errors are due to said fault of said tape medium; and a defective area detector for detecting a physically-defined defective area of said tape medium by statistically analyzing said locations of said writes associated with said failures as stored in said error locating unit, wherein said means for determining by statistically analyzing comprises means for comparing a write number to a threshold maximum.