Glossary Term

File Metadata

What is File Metadata?

Descriptive attributes associated with a file, such as name, size, owner, timestamps, permissions, and custom tags, that provide context about the file without revealing its contents.

File metadata is the information about a file rather than what’s in the file. Every file carries basic system metadata: filename, size, creation date, last modified date, last accessed date, ownership, and permissions. Some file types embed additional metadata, like EXIF data in images, headers in FASTQ genomics files, DICOM tags in medical images, or bibliographic fields in research datasets.

At small scale, this data is trivial. At petabyte scale with billions of files, metadata becomes the most important tool for understanding and managing an unstructured data environment. It’s the difference between knowing you have 50 petabytes of storage and knowing what those 50 petabytes contain, who owns them, when they were last touched, and whether they still have value.

A metadata-driven approach to data management extracts, enriches, and indexes file metadata across heterogeneous storage systems, then uses it to power automated policies for tiering, archiving, deletion, and compliance. Starfish extends native file metadata with custom tags and extracted attributes from 80+ file types, building a detailed data catalog that turns raw filesystem statistics into something you can search and act on.

Starfish Storage extracts and indexes metadata from 80+ file types across heterogeneous storage environments, enriching native file attributes with custom tags and deep content-level metadata. This turns raw filesystem stats into the searchable intelligence that powers automated tiering, compliance, and data lifecycle management.