Extract text from SRA files
To convert your SRA file to another format, you need SRA Toolkit or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Bioinformatics Data Archive" file type, you need software like SRA Toolkit or a similar tool.
The .SRA filename extension is a source of frequent confusion because it serves two distinct, high-profile professional sectors, plus several legacy consumer niches.
1. NCBI Sequence Read Archive (Bioinformatics): Most commonly, an .SRA file contains raw high-throughput DNA sequencing data from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. These files are heavily compressed binary archives designed for storage efficiency, not readability. You cannot open them in standard text editors or generic data tools. Researchers typically need to convert them into FASTQ (for raw reads) or SAM/BAM (for aligned data) using the command-line SRA Toolkit. A common problem here is the requirement for command-line proficiency to execute tools like fastq-dump just to view the biological data.
2. HHS Security Risk Assessment (Compliance): In the healthcare and IT security sector, .SRA files are project files created by the HHS Security Risk Assessment Tool. These files store HIPAA compliance audits and risk scores. They are proprietary to the tool and often need to be converted to PDF or XLSX (Excel) for presentation to stakeholders or auditors who do not have the software installed.
3. Legacy & Gaming: Less frequently, you may encounter .SRA files as Save RAM files for Nintendo 64 emulators (like Project64) or project files for the discontinued Scrapbook Factory software. For N64 saves, compatibility is strictly limited to the specific emulator version used.
Recommendation:
Convert.Guru analyzes your SRA file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SRM, N64, ZIP, SAM, FMS, MOC, SAV, BAM and FASTA files.
If you want to convert SRA file to SRM, SAV, BAM, FASTA, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use SRA Toolkit or similar software from the "Genomic Sequencing Data Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to SRA, try SRA Toolkit or another comparable tool in the "Genomic Sequencing Data Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our SRA converter.