A method for physically laying out data on tape is disclosed herein. In one embodiment, such a method includes receiving a data set, wherein the data set includes S sub data sets (SDSs) of fixed size and each SDS includes N codeword interleaves (CWIs). The method further distributes the CWIs for the S SDSs across T tracks on a physical tape medium such that the distances between CWIs of the same SDS are substantially maximized on the physical tape medium. To maximize the distances, the method periodically rotates the tracks within the data set by a track rotation value R, wherein the number of tracks T is equal to 2k, and the track rotation value R is equal to 2k−1−1. A corresponding apparatus is also disclosed herein.