The invention is directed to techniques for storing information on a
linear data storage medium, such as magnetic tape. According to the
invention, a write head array concurrently writes a plurality of data
tracks and at least one servo track onto the magnetic tape. In this way,
the servo track is integrated between the data tracks. The servo track
may, for instance, be located in the middle of a data band, and may span
a distance corresponding to two data tracks. By concurrently writing the
servo track with the data tracks, track misregistration (TMR) can be
reduced or eliminated during the write operation.