VMDK is a document format: it stores data in the VMDK format. TAR is a archive format that concatenates files into a single stream without compression, commonly paired with gzip or bzip2 for compressed tarballs on Unix systems. This packages the document into a compressed archive for smaller transfer size. Metadata such as creation date and embedded colour profiles is preserved where the target format supports it. Converting between these two formats is common when the source application does not support TAR natively or when the target platform only accepts TAR. 1converter processes this conversion server-side using open-source tools. Files are transferred over HTTPS, converted on secure cloud servers, and automatically deleted after 24 hours.