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The recording performance of a new magnetic tape based on perpendicularly oriented barium ferrite particles was investigated using a 90-nm-wide giant-magnetoresistive reader and a prototype enhanced-field write head. A linear density of 600 kb/in with a postdetection byte-error rate <;3 × 10 ^-2 was demonstrated based on measured recording data and a software read channel that used a noise-predictive maximum likelihood detection scheme. Using a new iterative decoding architecture, a user bit-error rate of <;1 × 10 ^-20 can be achieved at this operating point. To facilitate aggressive scaling of the track density, we made several advances in the area of the track-following servo. First, we developed an experimental low-noise tape transport. Second, we implemented an optimized servo channel that together with an experimental timing-based servo pattern enables the generation of position estimates with …