Patent ID: 8824083

Claim:
A method for determining read and write head placement errors in a tape drive, comprising: first positioning at least one read element of a read head of a tape drive over a nominal center position of at least one data track of a first magnetic tape with a servo tracking system of the tape drive; first reading data from the at least one data track of the first magnetic tape with the at least one read element; first determining, from the first reading step, an actual center position of the at least one data track of the first magnetic tape; first ascertaining a read head offset value of the tape drive from the nominal center position based on the actual center position of the at least one data track of the first magnetic tape, wherein the read head offset value is the difference between the nominal center position and the actual center position; writing at least one data track on a second magnetic tape with at least one write element of a write head of the tape drive; correcting a nominal center position of the at least one data track of the second magnetic tape with the read head offset value to obtain a corrected center position; and establishing a write head offset value of the tape drive from the corrected center position.