US Patent 11688420 Hybrid dedicated and dynamic servo for tape

The present disclosure generally relates to a tape head and a tape drive including a tape head. The tape head comprises servo heads configured to read servo data from a tape, a plurality of write heads configured to: write user data to a plurality of data tracks of the tape and write embedded servo data into one or more data fields of the tape, the embedded servo data comprising servo positioning information, and a plurality of read heads configured to read the user data and the embedded servo data from the tape. The embedded servo data may be embedded servo fields or embedded servo tracks. The embedded servo data allows the tape head to be accurately controlled and positioned above the tape, and for new data to be accurately appended to the tape.