Abstract: A system and improved method are provided for storage and error recovery of streams of MPEG data on storage media in audio/visual systems. Storage locations on the storage media are selected for streams of MPEG data according to the data rates of the streams of MPEG data and the properties of the available storage locations on the storage media. Error recovery is selectively implemented based on the content of the streams of MPEG data, and transmission bandwidth of the streams of MPEG data is maximized.

Abstract: An asymmetric quadrature-providing servo burst format for a tracking servo within a hard disk drive is particularly well suited for MR heads. The four-burst format may be written onto the disk with only two servo-writer passes per track by using an alternating one-third, two-thirds track pitch regimen. During operation of a drive incorporating the servo format of the present invention, the servo system uses an appropriate combination of bursts and burst sums, based on burst amplitude profiles, in order to achieve optimized position error signal (PES) continuity and linearity as the head moves off of nominal track centerline of each concentric data track.