Zettabyte

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Multiples of bytes
SI decimal prefixes Binary
usage
IEC binary prefixes
Name
(Symbol)
Value Name
(Symbol)
Value
kilobyte (kB/KB) 103 210 kibibyte (KiB) 210
megabyte (MB) 106 220 mebibyte (MiB) 220
gigabyte (GB) 109 230 gibibyte (GiB) 230
terabyte (TB) 1012 240 tebibyte (TiB) 240
petabyte (PB) 1015 250 pebibyte (PiB) 250
exabyte (EB) 1018 260 exbibyte (EiB) 260
zettabyte (ZB) 1021 270 zebibyte (ZiB) 270
yottabyte (YB) 1024 280 yobibyte (YiB) 280
See also: Multiples of bits · Orders of magnitude of data

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix zetta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes.[1][2][3][4]

As of February 2012, no storage system has achieved one zettabyte of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006.[5] This has increased rapidly however, as during the 2011 Fiscal Year, Seagate reported selling a combined total of 330 exabytes of hard drives. This does not include shipments from any other manufacturer, and only includes those sold during 2011. [6] As of 2009, the entire Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.[7] This is a half zettabyte.

  • 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 10007 bytes = 1021 bytes

The term "zebibyte" (ZiB), using a binary prefix, is used for the corresponding power of 1024.

[edit] Comparisons for scale

A zettabyte is equal to 1 billion terabytes.

  • 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). [8]
  • According to the annual survey of the global digital output by International Data Corporation, the total amount of global data was expected to pass 1.2 zettabytes sometime during 2010. This is equivalent to the amount of data that would be generated by everyone in the world posting messages on the microblogging site Twitter continuously for a century.[9]
  • 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."[10] A revised theory is that if you made an audio recording of the conscience and words of all humanity since the dawn of time and multiplied the data 4 times you would reach this 1 ZiB[11]
  • 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. [12]

[edit] References

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