A scanner in a helical tape drive is calibrated to read a plurality of data track groups recorded on a tape via a servoing system controller that monitors a scanned signal, detects an offset region for an appended group of tracks, calibrates the scanner to the appended group of tracks, stores alignment data associated with the calibration in a local memory, and re-scans the group of tracks by configuring the tape drive's servoing system in accordance with the stored alignment data for the appended group of tracks. The alignment data for a plurality of appended groups on the tape can be stored and later retrieved from the local memory and used within the servoing system controller to quickly align the scanner to the appended group of tracks without having to recalibrate the scanner to each of the appended groups during subsequent read operations.