The technology disclosed herein provides a method for generating an on-cylinder limit (OCLIM), the method including performing servo certification of a plurality of drives in a storage device to generate servo adaptive parameters (SAPs) by heads, generating a plurality of read adjust parameters (RAPs) by heads for the plurality of drives, generating an interim OCLIM value based on the SAPs by heads and RAPs by zones, and operating a disc drive write element using the interim OCLIM value.

A tape drive may arrange timing-based-servo marks into a timing-based-servo pattern. The timing-based-servo pattern may be at least one M-pattern. The tape drive may select the at least one M-pattern. The tape drive may match at least two timing-based-servo marks in the at least one M-pattern. The tape drive may determine, from the matching, whether an alignment of the at least two timing-based-servo marks is demonstrative of tape-creep.

A heat-assisted magnetic recording device includes a granular magnetic recording layer and a thermal absorption layer formed on top of the magnetic recording layer. The thermal absorption layer is patterned to include rows extending in a cross-track direction of the magnetic media, each adjacent pair of the rows being separated from one another by an insulating material.

An apparatus according to one embodiment includes a controller configured to control writing operations to a magnetic recording tape, and logic integrated with and/or executable by the controller for causing the controller to receive a plurality of records, store datasets associated with the plurality of records in a buffer memory, and write the datasets stored in the buffer memory to the magnetic recording tape in response to a predetermined number of datasets being stored in the buffer memory. For each of the datasets being written, an end longitudinal position indicative of a physical position where the dataset is physically written to the magnetic recording tape is determined. Moreover, for each determined end longitudinal position, the end longitudinal position and an identifier of the associated dataset are stored to a table of a dataset that is to be subsequently written to the magnetic recording tape.

A method for performing error recovery for data stored on a track of a storage device, in which the method includes: receiving a request to read the data from the storage device, identifying a plurality of sectors of the track to be read in response to the request, reading the data from the plurality of sectors of the track and parity data, based on the data read from the plurality of sectors, determining whether any of the plurality of sectors corresponds to a failed sector, and recovering a portion of the data from the failed sector using the parity data and portions of the data stored in remaining ones of the plurality of sectors.

Data can be transmitted and represented by signal gaps in a transmission, the gaps having various attributes. In various examples, data points are encoded and represented by the attributes of said signal gaps. Various attributes of such gaps, including duration, pattern, quantity, time, and/or coordination with a gap in another signal can represent data.

Some examples include a computing device that receives media content to distribute to a plurality of electronic devices. The computing device may receive an indication of first data to relate to the media content for distribution to the plurality of electronic devices. A portion of the multimedia content may be decoded to enable a determination that the media content already has second data embedded in the media content. A psychoacoustic mask may be extracted from the media content and subtracted from the received media content to remove the embedded second data. The first data may be associated with the media content by either embedding third data in the media content, or by embedding the first data in the media content.

Some examples include a computing device that receives media content to distribute to a plurality of electronic devices. The computing device may receive an indication of first data to relate to the media content for distribution to the plurality of electronic devices. A portion of the multimedia content may be decoded to enable a determination that the media content already has second data embedded in the media content. A psychoacoustic mask may be extracted from the media content and subtracted from the received media content to remove the embedded second data. The first data may be associated with the media content by either embedding third data in the media content, or by embedding the first data in the media content.

Technologies are provided for partially updating shingled magnetic recording (SMR) zones in SMR storage devices. An SMR storage device can receive and process a command to update a write pointer for an SMR zone to point to an arbitrary write position within the SMR zone. A partial SMR zone update command can be received and processed to modify part of the data stored in the SMR zone. A write position within the SMR zone where data to be modified is stored can be identified. Data stored in the SMR zone following the identified write position can be read to a temporary location and modified. A write pointer for the SMR zone can be updated to point to the identified write position. The modified data can then be written to the SMR zone, starting at the write position identified by the write pointer, or to another SMR zone of the storage device.

When a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard disk drive (HDD) receives a write command that references one or more target logical block addresses (LBAs) and determines that one or more target LBAs are included in a range of LBAs for which data are stored in a memory of the drive, additional data are written to the media cache of the SMR HDD along with the write data during the same disk access. The additional data include data that are stored in the volatile memory and are associated with one or more LBAs that are adjacent in LBA space to the target LBAs. The one or more LBAs that are adjacent in LBA space to the target LBAs may include a first group of LBAs that is adjacent to and follows the target LBAs and a second group of LBA that is adjacent to and precedes the target LBAs.