Tuesday
Sep112012
How big is a Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte, or a Yottabyte?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 9:15AM 
This is an intuitive look at large data sizes By Julian Bunn in Globally Interconnected Object Databases.
Bytes(8 bits)
- 0.1 bytes: A binary decision
- 1 byte: A single character
- 10 bytes: A single word
- 100 bytes: A telegram OR A punched card
Kilobyte (1000 bytes)
- 1 Kilobyte: A very short story
- 2 Kilobytes: A Typewritten page
- 10 Kilobytes: An encyclopaedic page OR A deck of punched cards
- 50 Kilobytes: A compressed document image page
- 100 Kilobytes: A low-resolution photograph
- 200 Kilobytes: A box of punched cards
- 500 Kilobytes: A very heavy box of punched cards
Megabyte (1 000 000 bytes)
- 1 Megabyte: A small novel OR A 3.5 inch floppy disk
- 2 Megabytes: A high resolution photograph
- 5 Megabytes: The complete works of Shakespeare OR 30 seconds of TV-quality video
- 10 Megabytes: A minute of high-fidelity sound OR A digital chest X-ray
- 20 Megabytes: A box of floppy disks
- 50 Megabytes: A digital mammogram
- 100 Megabytes: 1 meter of shelved books OR A two-volume encyclopaedic book
- 200 Megabytes: A reel of 9-track tape OR An IBM 3480 cartridge tape
- 500 Megabytes: A CD-ROM OR The hard disk of a PC
Gigabyte (1 000 000 000 bytes)
- 1 Gigabyte: A pickup truck filled with paper OR A symphony in high-fidelity sound OR A movie at TV quality
- 2 Gigabytes: 20 meters of shelved books OR A stack of 9-track tapes
- 5 Gigabytes: An 8mm Exabyte tape
- 10 Gigabytes:
- 20 Gigabytes: A good collection of the works of Beethoven OR 5 Exabyte tapes OR A VHS tape used for digital data
- 50 Gigabytes: A floor of books OR Hundreds of 9-track tapes
- 100 Gigabytes: A floor of academic journals OR A large ID-1 digital tape
- 200 Gigabytes: 50 Exabyte tapes
Terabyte (1 000 000 000 000 bytes)
- 1 Terabyte: An automated tape robot OR All the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50000 trees made into paper and printed OR Daily rate of EOS data (1998)
- 2 Terabytes: An academic research library OR A cabinet full of Exabyte tapes
- 10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress
- 50 Terabytes: The contents of a large Mass Storage System
Petabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)
- 1 Petabyte: 5 years of EOS data (at 46 mbps)
- 2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries
- 20 Petabytes: Production of hard-disk drives in 1995
- 200 Petabytes: All printed material OR Production of digital magnetic tape in 1995
Exabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)
- 5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.
- From wikipedia:
- The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), roughly 4 CD-ROM per person of 1993, 12 CD-ROM per person in the year 2000, and almost 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007. Piling up the imagined 404 billion CD-ROM from 2007 would create a stack from the earth to the moon and a quarter of this distance beyond (with 1.2 mm thickness per CD).
- The world’s technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1,200 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 1,900 in 2007.
- According to the CSIRO, in the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 petabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope.[11] The array is thus expected to generate approximately one exabyte every four days of operation. According to IBM, the new SKA telescope initiative will generate over an exabyte of data every day. IBM is designing hardware to process this information.
Zettabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)
- From wikipedia:
- The world’s technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 0.432 zettabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 0.715 in 1993, 1.2 in 2000, and 1.9 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2007 (this is the informational equivalent to every person on earth receiving 174 newspapers per day).[9][10]
- According to International Data Corporation, the total amount of global data is expected to grow to 2.7 zettabytes during 2012. This is 48% up from 2011.[11]
- Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio. This was done in response to a popular expression that states "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data (see exabyte for details). Liberman did "freely confess that maybe the authors [of the exabyte estimate] were thinking about text."[12]
- Research from the University of Southern California reports that in 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS.[13]
- Research from the University of California, San Diego reports that in 2008, Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information.
- Internet Traffic to Reach 1.3 Zettabytes by 2016
Reader Comments (94)
This is made for NERDS like
me!Of course the formula can be the same as has been displayed in some coments above. But another formula to find units above kb is "powering 2 when you are ascending to the upper units until to the maxmum". Thank you. Its jay (jesham mwanza)....
you're all wrong
I think a Domegemegrottebyte would be used on one computer in like the 2200s.
My only issue with this page is that the author chose to use the hard drive manufacturers units of measure rather than the traditional PoT (power of two) units of measure traditionally used in computer science.
1 bit
8 bits to a byte
1024 bytes to Kb
...and so on. This post will be very confusing to people who aren't familiar with the industry.
THese are cool they are bigger than the debt our country owes
If 1 kilobyte is 1024 and not 1000 bytes, it means that "kilo", when it comes to powers of 2, means the tenth power of 2 = 1024.
Just to keep consistency, you can't have the first "kilo" with one value (1024) and the next "kilos" with another value (1000).
This the slang meaning of "kilo" in computer science, 1024.
Likewise, in scientific slang, words such as power, force, field and others have a different meaning than in current language..
I don't think I will be alive when it comes to Zettabyte or Yottabyte
All of the people who just straight up assume this is wrong obviously didn't take into account the differences between processor or virtual storage and disk storage. This particular article explains disk storage which is 1000, while processor or virtual storage is 1024. Use this site to understand what I mean. http://www.whatsabyte.com
I am waiting for YB hard disk
hah n3rds
Another measurement: 8 Petabytes: The approximated save file size of a Minecraft world with everything explored
WOW!
No one Cares!!!!!!!!!
Gigaquad (10^9)^4 byte = 10^36 byte
Wheres the YAGAbyte
After reading all these comments it's giving me a headache. I'm middle aged and know a few things about computers but some of these comments are just mad! Keep up the dialog, a guy like me could do with learning a thing or two more things about pc's.
Its hillarious watching a bunch of ponces argue about 1000 and 1024, just accept it and move on. Its not ignorant.... Its just you lot being silly twats.
Yep its 2016 now, and I just found this to laugh at you idiots
that is amazing
So a Kilobyte is a thousand bytes.
And a Megabyte is a million bytes.
And a Gigabyte is a billion bytes.
And a Terabyte is a trillion bytes.
And a Petabyte is a quadrillion bytes.
And an Exabyte is a quintillion bytes.
And a Zettabyte is a sextillion bytes.
And a Yottabyte is a septillion bytes.
And a Xenottabyte is an octillion bytes.
And a Shilentnobyte is a nonillion bytes.
And a Domegemegrottebyte is a decillion bytes!
<h1>Wrong</h1>
Technically this whole page of information is wrong as a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes, megabyte is 1024 kilobytes etc.. But
one thing which would have been good is if you included a nibble which is 4 bits!!
What about a Godzillabyte?
That's the biggest right?
cool
What is a binary decision ? Yes or No ? Or ... is OR , or 0.1 , a logical operator ?
nerds