Terabyte
A terabyte is a SI-multiple (see prefix tera-) of the unit byte for digital information storage and is equal to 1012 (1000000000000) bytes or 1000 gigabytes. The terabyte is abbreviated with the symbol TB.
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The designation terabyte is rarely used to refer to the tebibyte, its binary prefix analogue, because only recent (since 2007) disk drives reach this capacity. Disk drive sizes are always designated in SI units by manufacturers. However, a possible confusion arises from a conflict between the long-standing tradition of using binary prefixes and base 2 for memory sizes, and the decimal (SI) standard adopted widely both within and outside of the computer industry. Standards organizations such as IEC, IEEE and ISO recommend to use the alternative term tebibyte to signify the traditional measure of 10244 bytes, or 1024 gibibytes, leading to the following definitions:
- According to the SI standard usage, 1 terabyte (TB) equals 1000000000000bytes = 10004 or 1012 bytes.
- Using the traditional binary interpretation, a terabyte is 1099511627776bytes = 10244 or 240 bytes = 1 tebibyte (TiB).
The capacities of computer storage devices are typically specified using their standard SI values, but many operating systems and applications report in binary-based values.
Examples of terabyte storage
- The U.S. Library of Congress Web Capture team has claimed that "As of May 2009, the Library has collected almost 100 terabytes of data".[1]
- Ancestry.com claims approximately 600 TB of genealogical data with the inclusion of US Census data from 1790 to 1930.[2]
- Hitachi introduced the world's first one terabyte hard disk drive in 2007.[3]
- In 1993, total Internet traffic amounted to approx. 100 TB for the year.[4] As of June 2008[update], Cisco Systems estimated Internet traffic at 160 TB/s (which assuming to be constant comes to 5 Zettabytes for the year).[5]
- As of May 2009, Yahoo! Groups had "40 terabytes of data to index" [6]
- Released in 2009, the 3D animated film Monsters vs Aliens used 100 TB of storage during development.[7]
See also
References
- ^ "How large is the Library's archive?". May 26, 2007.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ "Ancestry.com Adds U.S. Census Records". June 22, 2006.
- ^ "Hitachi Introduces 1-Terabyte Hard Drive". PC World. January 7, 2007. Retrieved 2008-09-15.
- ^ http://www.disco-tech.org/2007/10/an_exabyte_here_an_exabyte_the.html
- ^ White, Bobby (2008-06-16). "Cisco Projects Growth To Swell for Online Video". The Wall Street Journal.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Yahoo! Groups Blog". May 9, 2009.
- ^ IRENE THAM (April 8, 2009). "Taking a monster hit; Massive computer power was needed to create the 3-D movie Monsters Vs Aliens". The Straits Times.
The 3-D movie used up close to 100 terabytes of disk space and more than 40 million hours of rendering.