Data Storage Cards were cards which had information stored upon them in a non-digital format. The information on these cards did not need to be consumed for use with a computer, but may need to be retrieved easily. These types of cards were often punched only with data that may aid in identifying, sorting or classifying them, allowing a computer to perform searches through cards for individual card, groups of cards meeting a criteria, or even some basic statistical analysis.

Because only a limited subset of information was punched on a card, data storage cards generally had their full record written, typed, printed, or adhered to the card to store the complete data. Some cards, often called ‘Aperture Cards’, for example could be used to store prints of documents on microform media. These could be used to store documents, plans or scans which could be found by a computer, or card sorted in seconds from hundreds or even thousands of cards.