Talk:Physical media

Data communications vs. home media formats
I think the discussion of "physical media" in the sense of home media formats such as Blu-rays, CDs, and books would be better served as a separate article from "physical media" in a data communications context. I was not familiar with the data communications definition of the term prior to finding this article; I'm far more familiar with it used to refer to movies, TV shows, albums, books, etc. released on physical formats for consumers. Perhaps this article can be focused on data communications, while another article can focus on consumer media formats.

I'm relatively inexperienced with Wikipedia, and I've never created an article before, so I'd like to know if anybody else agrees with me and could possibly help me. Thanks. AnAbandonedMall (talk) 18:57, 28 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I think this article is correct: physical cables etc for data communications are called 'physical media'.
 * But I also came here because I was looking for physical media formats like CDs, tapes etc (not just for home use btw).
 * For now, I will just add a link to 'data storage'.
 * However that page too does not really cover physical media formats in detail as expected. The German version of that page (Datenspeicher) is a lot more informative. The German page 'Datenträger' is closest to 'physical media format'. It looks like it would make sense to create such a page and use the translations of the two mentioned German pages as a start.
 * But I am also no Wikipedia expert to decide what's the best way to deal with this. PRullmann (talk) 07:56, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I just saw a discussion in Talk:Data storage to add the page data storage device, which is a redirect to data storage for now. 'Data storage device' comes quite close to 'physical media format'. PRullmann (talk) 08:21, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Data storage device could be the mechanism that reads/writes the media or it could be the media itself. I would suggest we start with Physical media (communication) (move this article) and Physical media (storage) translation of Datenspeicher]. This article (Physical media) then becomes a disambiguation page. ~Kvng (talk) 16:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)