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)
Wow theses idiots really argue about this
1000 bit is 1kilobyte ,1000kilobyte is 1megabyte ,
1000megabytes is 1gigabytes, 1000gigabytes is 1 terabytes,,,,,,,, so on
Some websites are also defining this:
Brontobyte:
A Brontobyte is (you guessed it) approximately 1,000 Yottabytes. The only thing there is to say about a Brontobyte is that it is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes!
Geopbyte:
A Geopbyte is about 1000 Brontobytes! Not sure why this term was created. I’m doubting that anyone alive today will ever see a Geopbyte hard drive. One way of looking at a geopbyte is 15267 6504600 2283229 4012496 7031205 376 bytes!
According to this a xenottabyte is 1000 yottabytes. Wouldn't a brontobyte be the same thing
Can you tell me one thing 1024 Domegemegrottebytes equals how?
1 bit = 1 decision
2 bits = 2 decisions
3 bits = 3 decisions
4 bits = 4 decisions
5 bits = 5 decisions
6 bits = 6 decisions
7 bits = 7 decisions
8 bits = a letter (usually from your boss concerning your termination because all of your previous decisions were bad)
And now for something totally different ...
After we have catalog the entire universe will it require another universe to hold it? I hope String Theory pans out, that way we will have access to even more data to store and possible a dimensional data storage solution(DDSS). Already it has given us a new acronym to add to the old data banks.
I wonder if Seagate will take advantage of String Theory, once is becomes String Law, to create an inter-dimensional data storage solution to hold all this new found data? It could be called ...
(wait for it )
Dimensionally Attached SCSI Backbone Omnipresent Optical Translation (DASBOOT)!
Don't miss it.
Bytes are binary, nothing else. Ergo 1 byte, 2 bytes, 4 bytes, etc. Even programming languages such as Hex, etc. are based upon binary. It is the basis of all computer languages, be it hard (cards, etc.) or other. Pon or off, zero or one.
nice
Misconception here: its 'yobibyte' not 'kibibyte'
this information is from wikipedia
I really admire all the smart and intelligent ppl who commented whom are actually correct so I'm gonna rack a ill joke
I bet. Nobody even knew that after all the terabytes xenon yotta bites y'all forget about the underbite
I am not able to count these numbers. Who requires so much of storage?
i eat rocks
Bits are binary or Boolean valued objects, nothing else. Programming languages are all based on their compilers instructions to convert their human readable coding into a machine readable representation, which is a collection of zeros and ones. That said, the SI conventions to measure collections of binary objects is also valid.
Perhaps this analogy will help. Suppose there exists a company in France manufactures light switches, where one light switch can arbitrarily be in either in the 'off' position or in the 'on' position prior to being wrapped individually for retail sale. Now suppose that Quanta Services has won a new electrical contract to install light switches in a new very large architectural project contract comes along and places a bulk request for perhaps 15,740 light switches. More than likely the bulk crates are going to contain powers of ten, then multiples of ten quantities of individual light switches, i.e., one very large pallet will hold 10,000 light switches, then another collection of 5 smaller crates will hold 1000 light switches, there will be 7 medium boxes containing 100 light switches followed by 4 small boxes each containing 10 light switches.
Now to translate this analogy back into the computer science setting, since the size of the bits in question contained within the storage device are so tiny, it just doesn't make any sense to parse out quantities smaller than 1 kilobyte which equals 1000 bits: or equivalently a box containing 1000 very small on/off switches. The progression upwards is in powers of the kilobyte, hence the exponents on 1000, or equivalently all these exponents being divisible by powers of three, since 1000 is ten to the third power. In summary, 1 Megabyte is 1000 squared or 10 to the sixth power, 1 Gigabyte is 1000 cubed or 10 to the ninth power, 1 Terabyte is 1000 to the fourth power or 10 raised to the twelfth power.
Whoever is arguing about 1 KB being 1024 bytes or not should just open a command prompt, go to your terabyte hard drive. In my case, go to the search box in the taskbar of Windows 10, type command. Ok, black box, good. Now, I type d: hit enter. Next, type dir hit enter. At the bottom, it says 9 File(s) 2,490,814,792 bytes and 17 Dir(s) 610,953,277,440 bytes free.
Does that look like the computer is counting by 10s or 1000s instead of 8 and 1024? I think not. I can't tell you how much I want to facepalm when I see someone calling a Gigabyte 1 billion bytes like they are some kind of authority and are so sure of themselves. Storage manufacturers got smart and called a gigabyte 1,000,000,000 bytes because no one in their right mind is going to remember that a terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes (1024 (Bytes) X 1024 (KB) X 1024 (MB) X 1024 (GB)), but your computer still knows it this way. When you get to larger numbers, it is significant, because If you say that a terabyte is 1000 GB, then you are missing about 99 GB. Although, you lose about (I can't remember the exact number) 7.8% of your drive due to formatting. When you buy a 1000 GB drive, it is all marketing. You are really only buying approximately 931 GB formatted capacity. To prove this, go to File Explorer, click This PC, and in my case, right click on D: and then I click properties at the bottom of the context menu that comes up and I see that I have 362 GB Used space and 568 GB Free space, which is the 610,953,277,440 you see here and in the command prompt. All it takes is a few clicks in Windows, and you can clearly see the fact that 568 GB is not 568,000,000,000 bytes!
I agree with people saying it should go up in 1024, not 1000. I study computer science.
I currently study computer science and the guys talking about 1024 not 1000 are correct.
A punched card had 80 columns. NOT 100. Not 64 (base 10). I still have some punched cards - they still have 80 columns. No one should comment unless they've at least seen an IBM 29 card punch. More than one hole could be punched in a column thus allowing for a full character set.
replying to Adam
while it is true that 1 kilobyte is 1,024 bytes etc, some information is lost in formatting so it usually rounds down to 1000 units of the measurement below. another thing is that it's a lot easier to count in base 10 for humans so that's probably why they wrote 1,000.
A kilobyte is not 1000 bytes, its 1024 ie 2^10 a megabyte is 2^20, a gigabyte is 2^30, a terabyte is 2^40 etc