At high data rates and information densities, recorded data patterns in dig
ital magnetic recording systems can exhibit severe nonlinearities. Key caus
es for these nonlinearities are bandwidth limitations of the write path and
demagnetizing fields in the recording medium. The present note reviews the
structure of these nonlinearities, develops a simple yet generic write-pre
compensation scheme that is capable of counteracting them, and derives a te
chnique for adjusting this scheme according to information extracted within
the data receiver.