For all you guys who started school with computer already, what’s the biggest storage would you recall?
A floppy disk with 360kb capacity? Or 3.5″ diskette labled HD with 1.44Mb capacity? Note that the MB in the label does not mean High Definition or something, but its High Density.
In2007, Seagate in introduced the largest storage you could ever imagine – 1 Terrabyte.
Today’s very coomon storage are the USB sticks also known as Flash drives. The common size today is around 32G.
Gigabyte and Terrabyte are the common terminologies for storage nowadays. However in the commerical space, manufacturers like HP and IBM have introduced the largest storage that can be present in data centers – Yottabyte. 1 YT is equivalent to 1,000 Zettabytes.
For a better understanding, refer to the table below:
-
- 1 Bit = Binary Digit
- 8 Bits = 1 Byte
- 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
- 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
- 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
- 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
- 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
- 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
- 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
- 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
- 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
Now for a detailed definition of terminologies, here’s what “Whatsabyte” has to say:
Bit: A Bit is the smallest unit of data that a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information, such as Yes or No.
Byte: A Byte is equal to 8 Bits. A Byte can represent 256 states of information, for example, numbers or a combination of numbers and letters. 1 Byte could be equal to one character. 10 Bytes could be equal to a word. 100 Bytes would equal an average sentence.
Kilobyte: A Kilobyte is approximately 1,000 Bytes, actually 1,024 Bytes depending on which definition is used. 1 Kilobyte would be equal to this paragraph you are reading, whereas 100 Kilobytes would equal an entire page.
Megabyte: A Megabyte is approximately 1,000 Kilobytes. In the early days of computing, a Megabyte was considered to be a large amount of data. These days with a 500 Gigabyte hard drive on a computer being common, a Megabyte doesn’t seem like much anymore. One of those old 3-1/2 inch floppy disks can hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a small book. 100 Megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 Megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CD-ROM disk.
Gigabyte: A Gigabyte is approximately 1,000 Megabytes. A Gigabyte is a very common term used these days when referring to disk space or drive storage. 1 Gigabyte of data is almost twice the amount of data that a CD-ROM can hold. But it’s about one thousand times the capacity of a 3-1/2 floppy disk. 1 Gigabyte could hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals.
Terabyte: A Terabyte is approximately one trillion bytes, or 1,000 Gigabytes. Now we are getting up there to a size that is so large that it is not a common term yet. To put it in some perspective, a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte images or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video. A Terabyte could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collection of the Library of Congress. That’s a lot of data.
Petabyte: A Petabyte is approximately 1,000 Terabytes or one million Gigabytes. It’s hard to visualize what a Petabyte could hold. 1 Petabyte could hold approximately 20 million 4-door filing cabinets full of text. It could hold 500 billion pages of standard printed text. It would take about 500 million floppy disks to store the same amount of data.
Exabyte: An Exabyte is approximately 1,000 Petabytes. Another way to look at it is that a Petabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes or one billion Gigabytes. There is not much to compare an Exabyte to. It has been said that 5 Exabytes would be equal to all of the words ever spoken by mankind.
Zettabyte: A Zettabyte is approximately 1,000 Exabytes. There is nothing to compare a Zettabyte to but to say that it would take a whole lot of ones and zeroes to fill it up.
Yottabyte: A Yottabyte is approximately 1,000 Zettabytes. It would take approximately 11 trillion years to download a yottabyte file from the Internet using high-power broadband. You can compare it to the World Wide Web as the entire Internet almost takes up a Yottabyte.
