Nice idea. I think you'd have a problem with shedding. A HD head is designed to fly/float above a clean platter. Old tape is icky, flaky mess of brown dust and

Nice idea. I think you'd have a problem with shedding. A HD head is designed to fly/float above a clean platter. Old tape is icky, flaky mess of brown dust and wobbly plastic that would foul up the head PDQ. But rather than scanning maybe you could encapsulate a bunch of old HD densely together in some kind of epoxy/glass to make a high-res tape head?