Data-tape

"Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data-tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort—"

―Conan Antonio Motti, to Darth Vader^[1]

DeathStarPlans-SW100Objects — A data-tape cartridge containing the Death Star plans

Data-tape,^[2] also spelled as datatape,^[3] or data tape,^[4] was a type of physical storage media for different kinds of data. The tape itself, a continuous narrow, flexible strip, was stored on reels inside a protective shell. Monomolecular-switching binary tapes like the ones used by the Galactic Empire on Scarif had a 512-million-exanode capacity.^[5]

History[]

The secret plans for the Galactic Empire's powerful planet-destroying Death Star weapon were stored on data-tapes. These tapes were stolen and later downloaded into a datacard by members of the Rebel Alliance and spirited to Princess Leia Organa, who copied the data from them into the memory banks of the droid R2-D2 in order to deliver them to Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine.^[1]

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Behind the scenes[]

The plans for the Death Star were described as being recorded on data-tapes in the novelization of the original Star Wars film, released in 1976 before the release of the actual film, A New Hope, known at the time only as Star Wars. At the time, tapes were a modern means of storing information, though for data storage they later became largely obsolete.