A magnetic tape and servo elements of a magnetic head for reading and writing to the magnetic tape can ascertain servo band signals from different servo bands that are vertically aligned and adjacent to one another. When operating in a write or read mode, at least two servo elements can be activated to respond to a write/read operation based on a determined position across a width of the servo bands in the magnetic tape. The determined position is based on various pattern combinations from different servo band identifiers from the servo band signals.