Improvement of C/Nm characteristics by using tail-off recording method in obliquely evaporated Co-CoO tape

A new recording method to improve the R/W characteristics of Co-CoO obliquely evaporated tape is proposed. Using a tail-off method in which the recording current is cut for a certain period before applying the reverse field, the carrier-to-noise ratio increased by 2 to 3 dB compared to in the conventional method using a rectangular wave current. The above improvement was found to be due to an increase of carrier output and a decrease of media noise. The increase of carrier output can be explained as a suppression of demagnetization caused by the trailing edge field. On the other hand, the decrease of media noise is explained as an increase of the trailing edge field applied in the hard axis of the media which narrows the width of the domain.