Patent ID: 8810960

Claim:
A data storage system, comprising: a plurality of read/write heads, each read/write head of said plurality of read/write heads having a plurality of read/write elements; a plurality of data channels, a subset of said plurality of data channels coupled to a read/write head of said plurality of read/write heads; and a storage medium, said storage medium including a plurality of storage bands, wherein each read/write head is uniquely associated with a single storage band such that the read/write heads are alignable with a single mode of operation, and each read/write element is associated with a corresponding one of said plurality of data channels and operable to read and write data from or to corresponding tracks of a corresponding storage band; wherein said plurality of read/write heads comprises at least one read/write head having a read/write element configured for read after write operation as the storage medium travels in a first direction and at least one read/write head having a write/read element configured for read after write operation as the storage medium travels in a second direction opposite the first direction.