US Patent 7269687 Bounding defective regions of a tape storage medium

Systems and methods for storing data on a tape medium and coping with defective regions on the tape medium are provided. The method includes: writing a plurality of envelopes of data onto the tape medium, each envelope of data comprising a plurality of blocks of data; detecting a defective region of the tape medium; writing a boundary start field after the defective region, the boundary start field indicating that the defective region has been passed; and writing a boundary end field before the defective region of the tape medium, the boundary end field indicating that the defective region follows the boundary end field.