Format
Tape Archive Format
Summary
- Name
- Tape Archive Format
- Identifiers
-
- MIME: application/x-tar
- Apple Uniform Type Identifier: public.tar-archive
- PUID: x-fmt/265
- Format type
- Aggregate
- Description
- An archive format originally intended to archive files on backup tapes without a file system of their own. TAR files are usually uncompressed.
- Note
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing) http://fileformats.archiveteam.org/wiki/Tape_Archive https://fileinfo.com/extension/tar
- File extensions
-
tar - Source
- Digital Preservation Department / The National Archives
Relationships
- Has lower priority than
Internal signatures
TAR (Tape Archive)
- Note
- TAR specification has a 256 byte header which includes 6 octal numbers which may be space or null terminated, may have leading spaces or zeros, and may vary in position by one byte, all depending on which of the many flavours the format follows. The above signature was tested on varied TAR files off the internet and the unknown files in digital preservation successfully.
Byte sequences
- Min Frag Length
- Absolute from BOF
- Offset
- 0
- Max offset
- 0
- Byte Sequence
[21:EF]{104}[30:37][20:37](00|20){5}[30:37][20:37](00|20){5}[30:37][20:37]00{10}[30:37](00|20){10}[30:37](00|20){5}[30:37][00:37](00|20)- Endianness
- Little-endian
Changelog
-
Updated in V118
- Release date
- 30 April 2024
Tape Archive Format: Description created and documentation links added as part of PRONOM Research Week 2023. Submitted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
-
Updated in V115
- Release date
- 15 November 2023
Tape Archive Format: Amended bytes 107 and 115 from 00 to (00|20). Submitted by National Library of Norway.
-
Added in V34
- Release date
- 2 April 2010
Tape Archive Format: Signature developed through DROID 5.0 research