To realize the increase of recording density and the raise of transfer rate.

By a recording/reproducing head 5 furnished with m pieces of magnetic head elements 7, the recording/reproducing operation is carried out with respect to a magnetic tape by the helical scan method. In this case, the recording/reproducing operation is carried out in such a manner that the space Tp of respective magnetic head elements 7 for each other and the feed rate S of the magnetic tape 6 satisfy the following relations: mW/2<Tp<2mW nTp-W<S<nTp+W (where, n is integer), when the track width of respective magnetic head elements 7 is expressed as W.