Physical File Formats

File Formats

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Physical File Formats

Like the rest, this will be split down further.

One of the first steps in preserving data held on physical media is the correct identification of the medium. See Identifying Physical Media for more information on this.

Traditional

• Clay tablets
• Construction toys
• Clothing
• Paper
• Papyrus
• Parchment
• Quipu
• Stone carving

Capacitive

• Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED)
• Video High Density (VHD)

Electronical

• Flash memory
  • Thumb drive
• Game cartridges
• Read Only Memory (ROM chip)
• SIM card
• Smart card
  • Contactless smart card
• Transponder

Magnetic

• Disk cartridge
• Drum memory
• Floppy disk
• Hard disk
• Magnetic stripe card
• Magnetic tape (audio cassettes, video cassettes, reel-to-reel, etc.)
• Magneto-optical drive
• Wire recording

Mechanical

Groove media

• Dictabelt
• Gramophone record
• Phonograph cylinder
• Television Electronic Disc

Point based media

• Music box
• Piano Rolls
• Punched card
• Punched tape

Optical

Disc media

• Magneto-optical drive
• Optical Discs (CD, DVD, BluRay, etc.)

Photography and Projection

• Holography
• Microform
• Photographic film
• Photographic paper
• Photographic plates
• Transparency (projection)
• X-ray

Other

• Bar codes
• Optical mark recognition
• Phonautogram (phonautograph tracing)

External links

• We ❤ Retro Media: Vinyl, VHS, Tapes & Film (Video)