Tape medium noise measurements and analysis

Tape medium noise is extremely important in high-density tape recording systems. Here, AC and DC noise spectra are measured in MP tapes and analyzed assuming tape particle clustering. Measured DC noise of a saturated tape is larger than AC bulk erase noise. At long wavelengths, both spectra are larger than simple theoretical estimates that assume independent particles. At short wavelengths, the measurements are below the theory. Data fitting yields mean cluster lengths in the range of two to four particles. A small percentage of the tape is shown to be in "pole-free" pairs for the AC noise.