sequential access

adjective Computers.

1. of or relating to a storage medium, as magnetic tape, in which records must be accessed by reading or writing from the beginning of the file.
2. of or relating to file processing in which records are organized based on the sequence of keys contained in each record, and in which accessing a record necessitates first accessing all of the preceding records.

noun

1. a method of reaching and reading data from a computer file by reading through the file from the beginningCompare direct access