There is some merit in thinking of it as a transmission only device.
That is, it cannot store any data, but deconstructs on one end and has to transmit and reconstruct on the other end immediately, because the amount of data is infinitely high.
For Star Trek, they are sending all your mass as energy. The data is there to make sure they put all your bits back together in the right order. Though that was ruined by the one episode where they did make a copy, despite how hard they tried to technobabble around it.
There is some merit in thinking of it as a transmission only device.
That is, it cannot store any data, but deconstructs on one end and has to transmit and reconstruct on the other end immediately, because the amount of data is infinitely high.
If data is sent over a medium, then it could be stored, thus making copies possible.
For Star Trek, they are sending all your mass as energy. The data is there to make sure they put all your bits back together in the right order. Though that was ruined by the one episode where they did make a copy, despite how hard they tried to technobabble around it.
And the episode where they cure someone (i think picard?) of some space parasite or force by using the transporter to reset them to before they had it
And the episode where someone gets stuck as a whole ass sentient person in the pattern buffer
And tuvix
Again, some of my favorite episodes are “the transporter is fucked” episodes, but they leave a lot of holes in the narative imo