Adjusting a skew angle and lateral position of a tape head to reduce track placement errors

A tape drive to read and write to a tape medium, comprising:

• a tape head having servo readers and a plurality of data writers between the servo readers;
• and
• a tape head controller for controlling the tape head to write to data tracks on the tape medium between servo patterns, wherein the tape head controller performs operations, the operations comprising:
• rotating the tape head at a nominal skew with respect to the tape medium to position the servo readers in the servo patterns, wherein the data writers are located in a first plane of the tape head and the servo readers are located in a second plane in the tape head, wherein the first and the second planes are separated by a distance;
• repeatedly determining a skew angle, comprising the nominal skew adjusted by a delta angle, at which to rotate the tape head to position the servo readers in the servo patterns;
• repeatedly determining a lateral position error based on the distance and the delta angle;
• and
• repeatedly adjusting a lateral position of the tape head using the lateral position error to position the data writers in target data track locations at which to write data.

A method for controlling a tape head to write to data tracks on a tape medium between servo patterns, wherein the tape head comprises servo readers with a plurality of data writers between the servo readers, comprising:

• rotating the tape head at a nominal skew with respect to the tape medium to position the servo readers in the servo patterns, wherein the data writers are located in a first plane of the tape head and the servo readers are located in a second plane in the tape head, wherein the first and the second planes are separated by a distance;
• repeatedly determining a skew angle, comprising the nominal skew adjusted by a delta angle, at which to rotate the tape head to position the servo readers in the servo patterns;
• repeatedly determining a lateral position error based on the distance and the delta angle;
• and
• repeatedly adjusting a lateral position of the tape head using the lateral position error to position the data writers in target data track locations at which to write data.