 |  |
- "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
A data-tape cartridge containing the Death Star plans
Data-tape,[1] also spelled as datatape,[2] or data tape,[3] 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.[4]
History
The secret plans for the Galactic Empire's powerful planet-destroying Death Star weapon were stored on data-tapes. These tapes were stolen 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.[5]
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 consumer data storage they later became obsolete. By the early 2000s they had been supplanted almost entirely by other formats and as of 2019 are only used by large enterprises for long-term archiving/backup. The original film contains the first reference in canon to "data-tapes."
Appearances
- Ezra's Gamble (Mentioned only) (as "datatape")
- The Rebellion Begins
- Droids in Distress book (Mentioned only) (as "datatape")
Star Wars Rebels — "The Lost Commanders" (Mentioned only)- Star Wars Forces of Destiny — "Bounty of Trouble"
- Forces of Destiny: The Leia Chronicles
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story novelization (as "data tape")
- Star Wars: Rogue One: A Junior Novel
- Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (First mentioned)
- Star Wars: A New Hope junior novelization (Mentioned only)
- Escape from Darth Vader
- "An Incident Report" — From a Certain Point of View (Mentioned only)
- "End of Watch" — From a Certain Point of View (Mentioned only)
Sources
- Star Wars: Ships of the Galaxy
- Rey's Survival Guide
- Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide
- Star Wars: On the Front Lines