Talk:Terabyte

Centralization

Discussion about centralization took place at Talk:Binary prefix.

Why is this a seprate article??? —Noldoaran (Talk) 03:29, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Let's Not Confuse "Binary Prefix" with "SI Prefix"

I just spent the last hour or so repairing inconsistencies in the article in referencing the SI prefix and binary prefix, particularly in the "Quantities of Bytes" template. So sorry you had to work so hard, but thanks for the info.

The SI prefix refers to the modern-day metric system, in which one kilo-<unit> is equal to 1,000 <units>, one mega-<unit> is equal to 1,000 kilo-<units>, etc.

The binary prefix is similar to the metric system which uses "kilo" to denote a thousand, "mega" to denote a million, etc. However, the binary prefix (which is the correct way to denote the number of bits and bytes despite the fact that it is commonly misused and the subject of recent legal disputes) is based on a 2^n premise rather than 10^n; i.e. a "kilobyte" is 1024 bytes, not 1000; a "megabyte" is 1024 kilobytes, etc.

The IEC 60027-2 recently attempted to settle this dispute by declaring the commonly-used misuse to now be accurate because most people and businesses use it anyway. However, the authority of the International_Electrotechnical_Commission to unilaterally make this decision in defiance of long-held standards is largely disputed. --Kris Craig (67.183.207.37 06:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC))

Please read through binary prefix. I think you're misunderstanding something. The "commonly used misuse" is when kilo- = 1024. The IEC certainly did not declare it to be accurate. They said it was wrong and made a new prefix for such usage. The "correct way" to denote bits and bytes is with either a decimal SI prefix (100 kilobytes = 100,000 bytes) or a binary prefix (100 kibibytes = 102,400 bytes). One or the other is probably better, depending on the thing being measured. For instance, memory is always a power of two, so it lends itself to binary prefixes. Other things (hard drive sizes, data rates) don't have an inherent base, and are better measured with SI prefixes.

Also, this discussion should be on Template talk:Quantities of bytes; not here. — Omegatron 12:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem is, the IEC is not the sole authority on the matter, as I mentioned in my changes. The use of kilo- = 1024 was set by computer scientists and manufacturers long before they decided it was "wrong". And even then, it primarily in response to lobbying from hard drive manufacturers who wanted to overstate the disk capacity of their drives. My changes kept the IEC changes in the article, but put them into an accurate perspective. 67.183.207.37

kilo- has meant 1000 since the Greeks. It's fine to use kilo- = 1024 as an approximation or colloquialism, but it's definitely wrong where standards and precision are involved. It's expressly prohibited by the BIPM (SI), for instance. Our job is to report on things in an accurate way. The template and the article describe both the incorrect common usage and the more correct, but less common usage. Saying that the incorrect usage is the only usage is wrong and a form of advocacy, which we don't allow here.

Also, if you can provide any evidence whatsoever of an intentional "overstatement" of hard drive sizes by manufacturers, or of them "lobbying" for the IEC prefixes, I'd love to see it.

Please discuss changes to the template on the template's talk page, not here. — Omegatron 02:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I think most people's problem with the IEC's creative retro-naming is the terms they came up with simply sound silly or stupid, like some noise a character on a TV show for pre-verbal infants would make. I got started with computers in 1983, I know what a kilobyte, megabyte etc are when it comes to the subject of computers. There's NO confusion, except in the minds of the IEC and others who want to cause it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 05:24, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

There's no confusion? Based on what I see, there's plenty of confusion. There is no hardware-dependent reason to use 1,024 for anything other than word lengths and RAM; the SI units do not allow for a fudge factor. The SI system is designed to make things easier for people, not computers. Computers do math, they don't need us to make math easier for them rather than vice versa. 76.112.254.142 (talk) 12:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Origins of SI prefixes

66.32.123.29 commented on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention that the origins of the prefixes for terabyte, yottabyte and zettabyte are in some doubt. Particularly, whether 'tera' is derived from the Greek 'teras' (monster), or Greek 'tetra' (four), and similarly, I assume, whether 'zetta' is from the Latin alphabet 'zeta' or a distortion of Latin 'septem' (seven). Anyhow, dictionary.com has septem and octo roots for zetta and yotta, but another site claims that zetta and yotta were used due to a decision by the General Conference of Weights and Measures to use descending letters from the Latin alphabet, starting at the end (zeta). Anyone know the correct etymology for these? -- Wapcaplet 17:05, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

• No, Latin for 4 is quadri. 66.32.113.34 17:18, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oops, I meant Greek. -- Wapcaplet 17:22, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the history, as of this point, it keeps changing. An edit on July 5 by Heron says "it's from teras not tetra", but then, on August 2, 209.6.214.139 changed it back to saying it's from tetra. 66.245.22.210 16:47, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Objection to "Tradition"

"This difference arises from a conflict between the long standing tradition of using binary prefixes and base 2 in the computer world, and the more popular and intuitive decimal (SI) standard adopted widely in the industry."

This is not a matter of tradition. Base 2 is fundamental to the physical/logical construction of binary computing devices, whereas the 'inutitive' decimal system was a convenience adopted by marketeers. This has been noted in numerous reviews of computing hardware (citations are needed), usually during periods where hardware capability measurement transitioned from Kilo to Mega and Mega to Giga units (whether in terms of storage capacity or bandwidth). The reason (again noted in such articles) was that rounding Base 2 units down to decimal units invariably results in 'more bangs for the buck', which is clearly advantageous in regulatory regimes where comparative advertising is permitted, and more generally where levels of competition (and therefore advertising) are high.

193.118.251.61 (talk) 15:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)The Bagwan - If asked, google will respond with the more natural (to me) binary based answer
http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1CHMA_en-GBGB312GB314&aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=1+TB+in+GB
1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes

Raylu's opinion

I think it would be more convienient if we deleted all the pages and put them toghether (in a new one), as much of the content on the pages is similar or the exact same. --raylu 22:56, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

• What pages; can you make a complete list?? 66.245.99.122 22:57, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
  • Sorry I wasn't more clear and for the slow response. I meant the pages like kilobyte, megabyte, etc. raylu 03:58, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

We talked about it on Talk:Binary prefix#Vote_vote_vote.21, but decided to make a navigation template instead, since articles like megabyte are large compared to exabyte. - Omegatron 04:27, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

"A typical video store contains about 8 terabytes of video. The books in the largest library in the world, the U.S. Library of Congress, contain about 20 terabytes of text."

Does this take into account compression? Both video and text can be compressed, the latter especially. Text compresses extremely well. 68.203.195.204 01:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It shouldn't. The point is to illustrate the magnitude of the amount of data. While compression can reduce the amount of storage space it takes up, the actual amount of data remains the same. --Alexwcovington 08:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You are right that the "actual amount of data" remains the same, but the problem is that this number, "the actual amount of data", is unknown and cannot possibly be known in practice. Knowing it would require finding the smallest possible program that can generate the data and proving that it's the smallest. (See algorithmic information theory.) Therefore the anonymous user's objection is quite valid: where do these "8 terabytes" and "20 terabytes" numbers come from? They must be either a measurement of uncompressed data or of some compression (e.g. DEFLATE) of it. --Shibboleth 21:59, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I removed the claim about the "largest library in the world" completey, having changed it already. According to the respective websites, the British Library has more items, but LoC has more shelf space. Either way, I think the "largest" claim needs qualifying if it is to be used and personally I don't think it is very helpful anyway (especially to non-Americans). It would be better to say "more text than the xxx million books in the LoC" or something similar. Bobbis 21:02, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

well, a DVD contains either 4 or 8 gigabytes of data, so the claim is really saying that the typical video store has about 1500 movies in stock... but that ignores video tapes, and also in 2012 there is no such thing as a typical video store anymore, most have gone bust. As for the Library of Congress... throughout the history of computers (American) journalists have been fond of comparing the storage capacity of computers to the LoC, it is a commonly used reference. The catch is that 20TB is much larger than any number I recall previously hearing, so I'd like to see a reference. But the LoC is a moving target because they are constantly adding to it so that possibly makes it less useful as a reference. OldCodger2 (talk) 19:43, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

American trillion, Canadian...

Someone edited this article to say "million million, American trillion". Well, what is it in Canada?? In other words, American trillion, Canadian... 66.245.115.34 21:44, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See trillion. --Shibboleth 21:49, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So, shouldn't it then be "million million (English trillion)" or "million million (short scale trillion)" ? Ian Cairns 23:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My last edit tried to address these points. Ian Cairns 12:30, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

European (please write the answer here)

Well, the UK is part of Europe - so this should be 'answers' rather than 'answer'. Alternatively: Continental European (please write the answer here). Ian Cairns 01:46, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My last edit tried to address these points. Ian Cairns 12:30, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Size of Wikipedia

How large is the entire database of Wikipedia in terabytes as of this moment?? 66.32.244.146 02:34, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia Statistics the grand total for all Wikipedias is just 2.3 Gigabytes. --Alexwcovington 09:16, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The stats says now that on the 13 July 2005, Wikipedia is 4.1 Gb. 159753 20:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The latest numbers on the above link are for Sep 2006 Wikipedia is at 15 Gb. No new statistics have been updated since Oct 2006. Maetrix 19:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

You mean GB in the above, right, guys? 71.83.183.109 (talk) 08:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is only a few gigabytes big at this moment, but that's only counting the CURRENT revisions of all the articles. If you count all the revisions stored on the history of every article, then yes, you may get into the terabytes. Giggett (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Are they even related?

How are file sizes and 0's and 1's related? I do not agree with the pages being merged.

They are related in that a Terabyte is a measure of the amount of 0's and 1's. That said, I do agree they should not be merged. A terabyte is certainly a topic that can stand on its own as an article. A centimetre, metre, kilometre, etc... all have their own pages so why shouldn't a terabyte? — oo64eva (AJ) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 05:41, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Hence the question mark. All the smaller articles like pebibit should definitely be merged. See Talk:Binary prefix#Consolidate all the little articles and Talk:Binary prefix#We need a template for the little articles. - Omegatron 12:29, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Oh. Someone changed the merge template. It used to have a question mark after it for the bigger articles like megabyte. *sigh*... - Omegatron 12:31, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Terabyte or Terrabyte

Both versions are used on the same page! Which is correct?

Fixed Ian Cairns 10:06, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Terabyte" is correct. 67.183.207.37 05:55, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Gigabytes first

It's easier for the laymen to understand TB if we compare it to GB first.--Capsela 14:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Cite for the UPS thing?

"The shipping company UPS has approximately 474 terabytes of information in its databases."

There's no way that could possibly be true, is there? PSXer 03:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I've been googling around, and it looks like that figure could refer to the total hard drive space on all their computers (of which they apparently have over a quarter millions), not one gigantic database. Of course, quite a bit of that would probably be empty space, as well as a lot of redundant data on each computer such as OS files. PSXer 04:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Or backups. — SheeEttin {T/C} 18:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

A lot of nonsense in the numbers

Cisco's estimate of internet traffic in 2010 [1] pegs 2010 internet (not all IP traffic) at 342 terabytes per minute (14,955 petabytes per year), which puts that 2008 number of "160 terabytes per second" into serious doubt. Nowhere in the source can I find references to 160 TB/sec for anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.112.254.142 (talk) 12:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Advertising

Is the definition that's just a link to a web design company by that name at all allowable? I shouldn't think so. I'm going to remove it shortly if nobody objects. Maybe a mod could tell that user to stop the ads? GrubLord 11:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed Maxtor 1TB CompUSA reference

I removed the reference to the Maxtor 1TB external disk since it's actually two 500GB disks in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration. This is a very common type of product.

2TB drive

2TB drive available http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351 I have updated the text to mention this but I do not know citation protocol so I placed a link to the product here.195.195.5.253 10:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

unless lacie manufactures the drive themselves then it does not belong in the article. As far as I know, lacie just resells drives made by others. OldCodger2 (talk) 01:58, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Hard Drive Growth

4 terabytes Nov 4th hittachy

Terminology

It would help computer users like me, if we handled the difference between GB as reported by system software like Windows (i.e., 2^30 = 1,073,741,824) and GB as reported by many device manufacturens (i.e., 10 ^ 9 = 1,000,000,000).

Unfamiliar terms like GiB and TiB do not help much. Being too precise loses much of our audience. --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The point is discussed in Gigabyte#Consumer_confusion. Is that what you mean? Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, exactly! In fact, I'd also like to have a table which compares Giga BITS vs. Giga BYTES. When uploading and downloading large files, people want to estimate how long it will take.

For example, if my AVI video file is 12 GB (gigabytes) in size, how long will it take to transmit on a 100Mb (megabits per second) computer network? --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It's fairly safe to assume that a megabit as one million bits, but a gigabyte is anyone's guess. I suppose that's your point, right? How do you think the article can be improved though? Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

For one thing, remove claims that tebibyte et al. is in wide use. *This amount is now known instead as a tebibyte, to avoid confusion.

Secondly, let's collect the various charts such as the one at Binary prefix which compare byte prefixes based on 2^10 (1,024) with those based on 10^3 (1,000). I'm getting tired of re-inventing the wheel here. --Uncle Ed (talk) 02:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Where do you see the words "This amount is now known instead as a tebibyte, to avoid confusion"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thunderbird2 (talk • contribs) 08:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see now - you had already removed them. I have reinstated a weaker version of the claim. Thunderbird2 (talk) 08:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, T-bird. Your wording is much better than my deletion. Merry Xmas! --Uncle Ed (talk) 01:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas to you too :-) By the way, have you seen this? Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I made some further edits to indicate that both usages (SI and binary) are still in use; someone had edited it as if SI was the last word and everyone had ceased using the binary definition. (Yes, that would be nice, and it would be nice if the "tebi" style prefixes would come into use, but it's not the reality. I also addded that operating systems typically report the binary version. 58.108.76.51 (talk) 01:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

the terabyte is not a unit of bandwidth

Blahman2 has introduced the text.

• dreamhost offers its hosting customers 5 terabytes of bandwidth and they increase it per week for each individual.

I removed the text once because it doesn't make sense (the terabyte is not a unit of bandwidth) and was reverted by Blahman2. I then tried to improve it (by replacing TB with TB/s in the hope that this was the intended meaning) and was reverted again. Do others have suggestions for improving the text? I still think it should be deleted. Thunderbird2 (talk) 23:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Try per month. It doesn't represent a top instantaneous speed, but a "if you're running at full speed all the time, we're gonna charge you more" limit. Is that a bandwidth measurement? Well, it has the right dimensions anyway. 5T/s would be really fast! --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Bandwidth is this context is a rate or speed meaning it is "something" over "a period of time". In this context the term "terabyte" on its own is therefore not bandwidth. The ISP may use the the shorthand of a size without specifying the period of time explicitly but the period of time is implied, in this case it is most likely a month. So the term terabyte/month would be more accurate, but it would also look messy :) . Fnagaton 12:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Five terabytes per month is only 2 megabytes per second. I don't think that a bandwidth of 2 MB/s merits a mention on the terabyte page. Therefore it should be deleted. Thunderbird2 (talk) 16:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Why is "per second" the most important measurement? That little factoid is about a policy which doesn't apply per second; it applies per month. Converting it to any other time frame makes it meaningless. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The bandwidth article quotes all speeds in multiples of bits per second (kbps, Mbps). You say it (the 5 TB/month) is not a "top instantaneous speed". That seems to me to be tantamount to stating that it is not a bandwidth. Just another reason for deleting the dreamhost item. So what quantity is it that equals 5 terabytes per month? Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I've not done business with dreamhost (or even bothered to research the statement - I'm not the one who put it in the article in the first place, and in fact I didn't even look at the article until right now, I was just answering Thunderbird2's question). But you seem to be disputing the word "bandwidth" as it's used by this particular industry. Perhaps you should take a look at Bandwidth (computers)#Bandwidth in web hosting where this newer usage of the word is described. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 23:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand. The link says it should be referred to as "monthly data transfer", so I will change it to that. Thanks Thunderbird2 (talk) 23:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Promotion issue?

It strikes me that the inclusion of this point in the article comes across as promotional (less so now than the original, but still). Do others not think so? Other points in the section seem to either involve non-commercial entities, or make claims that wouldn't really be used in marketing—no-one is going to say "wow, Walmart have a huge data warehouse, must use them!" SamBC(talk) 18:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Data transfer caps

The real point is that the term "bandwidth" has fallen into widespread misuse amongst hosting provider's promotional materials. It is very common to see such claims as "5 TB bandwidth included" to mean "extra charges commence after the first five terabytes transferred each month" or "your service may be suspended after the first five terabytes transferred each month". This says almost nothing about the actual data rates during transfer (peak or sustained). It could imply 50 seconds of service at 10 gigabits/second over each of ten simultaneous connections, or much longer service over less hungry connections.

Any datacomm engineer would cringe even at conflating data rate with bandwidth (compare baud). In North America, the old 300 baud modems were often configured to use 8 data bits, a start bit, a stop bit, and a parity bit, so they had an effective peak data rate of 300 * 8 / (8+3) = 218.18 bits per second. Yet they occupied most of a 3kHz telephony channel's bandwidth in the band between 300 and 3300 Hz. When 1200 baud modems were introduced they changed symbol encoding but still used the same bandwidth. At the time it was widely believed even amongst fairly sophisticated users that Shannon's law and the Nyquist criteria meant there would never be more than 6 kilobits per second possible over a telephone line (total up and downstream). Ultimately designers were able to approach 56 kilobits per second over the same 3kHz bandwidth by using more and more sophisticated symbol encoding and error correction schemes to trade off increased raw bit error rates for reduced signal to noise margin in each separately corrected sub-channel.LeadSongDog (talk) 15:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Mac Pro comment

I'm removing it, as it doesn't need to be in the article. Any computer can have 4TB worth of 4 harddrives. 68.154.166.169 (talk) 14:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. 200.192.77.252 (talk) 20:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

"Terabytes in use"?

I not sure the relevance of the "Terabytes in use" section. Terabyte hard drives are widely commercially available and many PC users (myself included) have such drives. The section may have been important a few years ago, but is now outdated and needs to be removed.--Marcus Brute (talk) 04:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I partially agree, and have removed some of the old references. But not entirely. The point of the section is not to say "look, terabytes are HUGE!" but to give an estimate of how much a terabyte is, in "real-world" terms. For this purpose, some of them are relevant, I think. Also, since you placed the tags at the top of the page — can you describe what the issues are? Shreevatsa (talk) 15:20, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is that other editors are likely to dump an endless list of examples as there is no selection criteria (see WP:TRIVIA). This could be solved by re-writing the list into prose or adding an initial criteria for the list such as "Examples of the term terabyte being used in different fields are:", consequently examples would be encouraged for computer hardware, printed information, video compression... with only one example for any possible field. In particular this eliminates the endless list of computer hardware examples. I have implemented the latter solution without removing any examples in the current list.—Ash (talk) 06:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Putting the size in perspective

Using the binary counting numbers for megabyte and terabyte, it would take 209,714.8 five megabyte hard drives to hold one terabyte. Did that many 5 meg drives ever exist? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 05:26, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

yes, the IBM PC's at one point, had 5 meg hard disks, I'm sure they shipped millions of them. OldCodger2 (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Access dates in references

Hi, The edits you reverted are specifically covered by MOS:DATE#Dates, you are adding ambiguous dates back onto the page. Please take this up on the article talk page if you feel this is wrong.—Ash (talk) 00:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The dates are NOT ambiguous, these are the standard ISO formats, see ISO 8601, never ambiguous. There is no other format of this type that uses another sequencing. WP doesn't use them in running text, because it is not common in English to do so, but this doesn't mean they shouldn't be used for technically accurate representations elsewhere. Kbrose (talk) 00:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

MOS:DATE#Dates does not prohibit them, in fact it states they are useful for technical reasons. Kbrose (talk) 00:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

MOS:DATE represents the consensus and is very clear. You are free to propose a change so it allows for ambiguous dates in the style you prefer. The argument you have given above would also allow for the use of the "YYYYMMDD" format which ISO 8601 uses but would hardly be meaningful in footnote dates in encyclopaedic articles (Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a technical document). I'm off to bed but if you still feel the same way in 12 or 24 hours, I suggest a third opinion may be in order. Oh, I can see you just reverted the text again. Isn't that rather rude whilst we are still discussing the matter?—Ash (talk) 00:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The ISO format is not ambiguous and a strong argument can be made for its use in this article due to its popularity in technical/scientific fields. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

There is absolute no consensus whatsoever in MOS to wholesale-replace the format where used for good reason. Cataloging of access dates and other similar technical uses and comparisons are certainly good reasons. Kbrose (talk) 01:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

There is consensus to apply the table in MOS:DATE#Dates to reduce ambiguity of dates. The revert in question was limited to the date and accessdate parameters used in the {{cite news}} and {{cite web}} templates (see diff). In the case of the cite news template it states "date: Date of publication. To avoid ambiguity, write out the month in words, using the same date format as in the main text of the article" and in the case of the cite web template the many examples used in the template guidance use the unambiguous date format in compliance with MOS:DATE#Dates. Consequently I am only trying to apply the templates as defined by the guidance for the templates and the Wikipedia manual of style. If you consider the policy of consistency, the footnotes should align with the date format in the sources or the body of the text; you can see that text months are used rather than numeric months, this would also be a rationale for the footnote to use the textual month.—Ash (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The policy says nothing about body dates being consistent with citation dates, only that each type itself should be consistent. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I also point out the failure of Wikipedia:Mosnum/proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Er, please read the text in italics in my above paragraph, the template guidance states the exact opposite.—Ash (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

That's one template vs. the several in use; examples in docs aren't binding. The guidelines conflict, an unfortunately not uncommon occurrence. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I note that this section title refers to accessdate rather than date. To avoid conflating the two, if we put aside the debate on accessdate format, as the guidance and templates for citations clearly state that citation date should use the same format as the article body, is there any argument against applying policy here? I note the conclusion of the Mosnum proposal you referred to was "consensus to allow YYYY-MM-DD in footnotes" (not to mandate it) but the context of the discussion itself principally related to accessdate and there was no consensus to obviate the current policy of having date in the same format as used in the article.—Ash (talk) 12:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Someone's having a laugh with a reference, and a question

Laugh

From the article: "* Video - Released in 2009, the 3D animated film Monsters vs. Aliens used 100 TB of storage during development."

Seriously????????? "Taking a monster shit"? Interesting there is no web version of this article given ....

Question

I'm a dummy and can't do sums. How many GBs in a TB? I've just bought a 1TB external hard drive and each backup is 35GB. So how many will i squeeze into my hard drive?86.133.208.153 (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know 1TB equals about 1000GB 156.8.251.130 (talk) 03:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

about 28 backups of 35GB each.156.8.251.130 (talk) 03:09, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

A 1TB hard drive gets about 976 GB, but since hard drive companies only count 1000 bytes per KB, where they are supposed to count 1024 instead. But still 976 GB is a lot, so you should fit about 28 backups on that drive. Giggett (talk) 23:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What now, 1000 or 1024?!?

The article states that "1 terabyte is 1000000000000 bytes or 1024 gigabytes". Both of those obviously can't be correct (that would imply that a GB is 976 562 500 bytes, which is nonsense both from a SI and from a binary viewpoint). Time to decide?

I'm changing 1024 to 1000. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.182.240 (talk) 07:27, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

High ISO IEEE number -- makes no sense

Huh? could somebody please explain the following quote, it makes no sense to me. The High ISO IEEE number of the terabyte means it can be thought of a physical form of memory, of which the singular byte cannot be. I nominate this for deletion or rewrite, any takers? OldCodger2 (talk) 20:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Cost of Storage

I added a new section on Cost of storage. I hesitated to do this without discussing it first, however I have often seen statements of encouragement for people to be somewhat fearless in making contributions. I feel that a section on cost is another way to add context to the understanding of the size of a terabyte. Since this measurement (terabytes) is most commonly used with reference to disk drives and since there is already a section on disk drive capacity, it seemed reasonable that there should also be a context to show how the cost of that capacity has changed over time. Does that make sense? Now, if I could just remember how much I used to pay for a box of punched cards... ;-) OldCodger2 (talk) 20:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

After seeing a 3 TB drive on a 3 day sale for $135 i was inspired to update the Costs table with 2013 prices. The problem is that this is a simplification, the prices are actually all over the place depending on features and speeds and there are older drives still being sold for more than newer drives etc.. I tried to pick drives that were representative of the over-all trends. In the case of the 1 TB drive I actually split the difference, there was a cheap drive for $65 but of questionable quality, and a better drive for $75, so I went with $70 as being a representative price. Having actually paid $1000 for a 1 Gigabyte drive... a great bargin at the time... these prices just continue to astonish me. OldCodger2 (talk) 02:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Illustrative usage examples

I came here to see if I could find some layman's examples of what 1TB is equivalent to (x no. of books, say, or y hours of video). Only the 'Audio' example in the list here does that - the rest just link one un-visualisable quantity to another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.210.132.93 (talk) 10:59, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

The JEDEC link

This JEDEC reference clearly shows "binary tera = 1099511627776 bytes" As such there isn't any logical justification for removing it from the article. Fnagaton 05:32, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

See the talk here [2] Fnagaton 05:54, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Dondervogel2 is vandalizing the article by repeatedly blanking an entire section. [3]. Please stop this vandalizing otherwise I will have not alternative to raise the issue of your vandalism. Glider87 (talk) 11:54, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, it is you and your sockpuppet Fnagaton who are disturbing the relative peace and stability of the article that existed before your recent reemergence on the scene. You have been warned of your activities on your talk page User talk:Glider87. Your edits introduce your personal point of view and wish that the metric prefixes remain in use in the binary sense, despite standards based rule and the steady progress of acceptance of binary prefixes across the industry. Kbrose (talk) 13:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a sockpuppet, I'm an editor who has seen the problematic point of view pushing of Dondergoval2 and your edits also push a similar same point of view. Vandalism of articles, which Dondervogel's edits are, and reverting of vandalism is not edit warring. You have no consensus for your edits because your edits violate WP:NPOV. Your edits violate WP:NPOV because you are trying to remove relevant sourced material from the article because it is contrary to your stated beliefs. You earlier said people using terabyte with binary quantities were lazy, which shows your point of view pushing. Glider87 (talk) 14:06, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

The original reference clearly does not show a binary "Tera-". I haven't checked any other references in this thread. That being said, Dondergoval2 and Kbrose have damaged other articles because of their (apparent) belief that binary "giga-" should not be used. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:04, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

@Arthur Rubin: Thank goodness a real editor finally appears on this page. Thank you for confirming what Kbrose and I have repeated multiple times. To be honest though I don't get the second part of your message, concerning "damage" caused by "Dondergoval2 and Kbrose". Are you able to substantiate this accusation? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:36, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually the table in the standard document does show terabyte worth a binary power of two value. I think you Dondervogel and Kbrose should be blocked for edit warring and damaging the article.Fnagaton 05:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Glider87 posted a screenshot from the JEDEC standard document JES100B [4] it shows that the table includes a "tera + binary" which is equal to a power of two value. Including that table in the standards document is a reliable source. Fnagaton 15:11, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Dondervogel 2 is edit warring and refusing to talk here. The reliable sources do support what is in the article and they are not dubious.Glider87 (talk) 13:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The JEDEC link (link number 2) has the table "Factor Name Symbol Origin Derivation" that table contains the same information as the picture from the standards document. Trying to claim that link does not show binary tera is a huge mistake because that table and the picture are from the same source. The text in the table is badly formatted that's all, but it's still reliably showing binary tera. Glider87 (talk) 13:32, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The other standards document has binary terabyte used. These links to the JEDEC all show binary terabyte being used. Calling them dubious and repeatedly putting dubious tags in the article is not-neutral. If you think the links are not good then you explain here why not. Don't damage the article with incorrect dubious tags.Glider87 (talk) 13:40, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

This is correct. The tags put there by Dondervogel are incorrect.Fnagaton 23:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The JEDEC say "terabyte commonly used as a prefix to units of semiconductor storage capacity and meaning 240 [1 099 511 627 776] bytes." Fnagaton 23:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Disputed references

I added the {dubious} tag because I am not convinced the references cited are reliable sources that back up the statement. The text containing the disputed references reads:

1 TB is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1099511627776 (1024⁴ or 2⁴⁰) bytes, particularly for sizes of RAM or storage. A JEDEC standards document JESD84-B42 [5] mentions tera in the binary sense "2 Tera bytes (4 294 967 296 x 512B)" on page 86.

I propose we discuss the reliability of these references here. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The discussion has implications for other pages, such as Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte, Yottabyte, Brontobyte, Geopbyte and Binary prefix. I will therefore alert those pages (except brontobyte & geopbyte, which do not have WP articles) of the discussion here. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:50, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Pages notified. For good measure I also included Timeline of binary prefixes. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:01, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Nice attempt at forum shopping. The talk section above contains more than enough reliable sources to demonstrate binary prefix use for tera, peta, exa etcGlider87 (talk) 12:21, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

General comments

• I can't access the fourth reference, probably because its URL is encoding someone's access ID, but while I agree these (at least the three I can access)are not great references, they do illustrate the binary usage. Where are you going with this? What happens if we discard these references? Rwessel (talk) 16:35, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

U can access the fourth reference by Google searching just the terms Iannarelli petabyte storage. As it turns out it is a bad reference in that it states capacitity of hard drives is stated with binary prefixes. Tom94022 (talk) 18:03, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• There are two main issues. One is that the first JEDEC reference clearly defines tera in a binary decimal sense, and so cannot support the sentence as it stands; that one needs to go. The question then is the extent to which the other sources are reliable ones. If we accept them as reliable sources it has implications for petabyte, exabyte, etc. It would also mean there would be a case for new articles Brontobyte and Geopbyte, which (by implication) would be defined by the same reliable sources.
• If the weaker references are removed, is the statement as worded still supported by the ones remaining?
• So, are they reliable sources? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• I'm missing something. The sentence is "1 TB is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1099511627776 (1024**4 or 2**40) bytes...", how does the JEDEC reference not support that? Rwessel (talk) 18:35, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• Which JEDEC reference do you mean? I am looking at Source 2 below, which includes the following two definitions (my emphasis)

• 2⁴⁰ tebi Ti tera + binary: (2¹⁰)⁴ = 1 099 511 627 776
• tera: (10³)⁴

• I see no support for a binary definition there. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• As Rwessel says the reference clearly says "1 TB is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote 1099511627776 (1024**4 or 2**40) bytes..." stop denying the facts.Glider87 (talk) 12:18, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Source 2 below, includes the following definition (my emphasis)

• 2⁴⁰ tebi Ti tera + binary: (2¹⁰)⁴ = 1 099 511 627 776 tera: (10³)⁴

I suggest the use of tera on both sides of the equation is sufficient and this one source is reliable. I further suggest references 1, 3 and 4 are redundant and/or unreilable and can be removed.
If someone wants to spend $71 for JEDEC JESD 100 Revision B, December 1, 2002 we might get an answer to whether it includes tera im a binary sense or not. It's absence from the JEDEC dictionary is not proof of its absence from the standard. I did send an email to JEDEC asking they update their dictionary.
I do have a concern about the word "storage' in the sentance since most storage as opposed to memory is reported by its vendors with decimal prefixes. I propose just deleting the "or storage." Tom94022 (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

In my interpretation of the definition from the JEDEC website (Source 2), there is a semicolon missing between "1 099 511 627 776" and "tera". With that semicolon included (see my earlier post above) it does make sense, defining tebi as a binary prefixe and tera as a decimal one.

My take on the Iannarelli book is that, while it might be a perfectly good source for an article about company security, it does not exactly major on computing. If tera is used in a binary sense (and I suspect it is, somewhere, probably for supercomputing), there must be a better reference than this one.

To summarise what we have so far for the 5 sources:

1. whatsabyte: open
2. JEDEC: does not back up statement (decimal definition)
3. kelas: unsuitable reference (WP mirror)
4. Iannarell: unreliable source (discredited; does not major on computer memory or storage)
5. JESD84-B2: open

This still leaves sources 1 and 5 as possible reliable sources.

Regarding the wording of the text under discussion, I agree it can be improved, but suggest we delay discussion on how to reword until we have settled on which, if any, of the 5 sources survive the purge. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:18, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

This article about BlueGene/L uses "32 TB" in a binary sense (65536 nodes * 2 GiB/node = 32 TiB). Does anyone know what unit symbol IBM uses to describe this amount of memory? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:33, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

This presentation by K E Jordan of IBM uses "32 TB" in the binary sense. I also found this one (from the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, about BlueGene Q) using TiB, but no matter - the issue here is whether TB is sometimes used in a binary sense, and the IBM source suggests it is, sometimes. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:41, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Source 2 below, includes the following definitions (my emphasis)

• 2³⁰ gibi Gi giga + binary: (2¹⁰)³ = 1 073 741 824 giga: (10³)⁴
• 2⁴⁰ tebi Ti tera + binary: (2¹⁰)⁴ = 1 099 511 627 776 tera: (10³)⁴

plus similar expresions for kilo and mega.
I suggest the use of tera on both sides of its equation, (like kilo, mega and giga for their equations) can only be intrepreted as JEDEC using tera in both binary and decimal meanings. JEDEC is a reliable source. The only changes necessary are removing the redundant/unreliable sources and correcting the "or storage" language. Tom94022 (talk) 23:09, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• It's obvious that Dondervogel isn't reading the reference correctly. It's also obvious that the reference does say "tera + binary: (2¹⁰)⁴ = 1 099 511 627 776" which is tera in the binary sense. Fnagaton 11:38, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• DICTIONARY OF TERMS FOR SOLID-STATE TECHNOLOGY, 6th Edition Free download after registration says "terabyte commonly used as a prefix to units of semiconductor storage capacity and meaning 240 [1 099 511 627 776] bytes". The JEDEC dictionary says terabyte is a binary quantity commonly used in storage capacity. Fnagaton 11:49, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

A proposal

Proposed change

Based on the evidence so far, I propose we delete sources 1 to 5, replace them with the best BlueGene reference we can find using 32 TB in a binary sense, and rephrase the text to clarify that it applies to supercomputer memory. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:50, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• Counter proposal, you stop violating WP:NPOV by repeatedly adding incorrect tags for reliable sources. Fnagaton 11:36, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Supporting references

1. Hoisie, A., Johnson, G., Kerbyson, D. J., Lang, M., & Pakin, S. (2006, November). A performance comparison through benchmarking and modeling of three leading supercomputers: blue Gene/L, Red Storm, and Purple. In SC 2006 Conference, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE (pp. 3-3). IEEE. "32 TB" of "Total Memory"
2. Yoo, A., Chow, E., Henderson, K., McLendon, W., Hendrickson, B., & Çatalyürek, Ü. (2005, November). A scalable distributed parallel breadth-first search algorithm on BlueGene/L. In Supercomputing, 2005. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE SC 2005 Conference (pp. 25-25). IEEE. "32 TB of total memory"
3. Strande, S. M., Cicotti, P., Sinkovits, R. S., Young, W. S., Wagner, R., Tatineni, M., ... & Norman, M. (2012, July). Gordon: design, performance, and experiences deploying and supporting a data intensive supercomputer. In Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment: Bridging from the eXtreme to the campus and beyond (p. 3). ACM. "64 TB DRAM"
4. Preissl, R., Wong, T. M., Datta, P., Flickner, M., Singh, R., Esser, S. K., ... & Modha, D. S. (2012, November). Compass: a scalable simulator for an architecture for cognitive computing. In Proceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (p. 54). IEEE Computer Society Press. "256 TB memory"

Discussion of proposed change

<discuss proposal here>

Source 1: whatsabyte

link to reference

Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes... What Are They?

summary

• Defines 1 terabyte as 1000 gigabytes or 1024 gigabytes.
• Defines 1 petabyte as 1000 terabytes or 1024 terabytes.
• Defines 1 exabyte as 1000 petabytes or 1024 petabytes.
• Defines 1 zettabyte as 1000 exabytes or 1024 exabytes.
• Defines 1 yottabyte as 1000 zettabytes or 1024 zettabytes.
• Defines 1 brontobyte as 1000 yottabytes or 1024 yottabytes.
• Defines 1 geopbyte as 1000 brontobytes or 1024 brontobytes.

discussion

• This source is accurate, as are all these others [6] [7] Fnagaton 11:45, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Source 2: JEDEC dictionary (entry for 'mega')

link to reference

mega (M) (as a prefix to units of semiconductor storage capacity)

summary

• Defines tera as 1000⁴

discussion

This reference defines tera as 1000⁴, and therefore does not support the statement that tera = 1024⁴. It should be removed. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:07, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• You're wrong because the reference also defines tera as a power of two quantity. It's right there for everyone to see. It should stay because it's a reliable source for terabyte being a power of two quantity. Fnagaton 11:11, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Source 3: kelas

link to reference

JEDEC memory standards

summary

• Claims that JEDEC Standard 100B.01 defines tera as 1024⁴

discussion

This looks like a mirror of the WP article JEDEC memory standards, which is unsuitable as an independent source. It should be removed. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Source 4: Google books

link to reference

Iannarelli, J. G., & O’Shaughnessy, M. (2014). Information Governance and Security: Protecting and Managing Your Company’s Proprietary Information. Butterworth-Heinemann.

summary

• Defines 1 terabyte as 1024 gigabytes.
• Defines 1 petabyte as 1024 terabytes.
• Defines 1 exabyte as 1024 petabytes.
• Defines 1 zettabyte as 1024 exabytes.
• Defines 1 yottabyte as 1024 zettabytes.
• Defines 1 brontobyte as 1024 yottabytes.
• Defines 1 geopbyte as 1024 brontobytes.

discussion

The book is primarily about information security, not computer memory. Hardly seems a good choice to support the text under scrutiny. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:57, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• It's describing storage values as binary terabytes and binary petabytes. It's a reliable source. Like this onewhich describes why you're wrong.Fnagaton 11:09, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Source 5: JESD84-B42

link to reference

JESD84-B42 [8]

summary

"The maximum density possible to be indicated is thus 2 Tera bytes (4 294 967 296 x 512B)."

discussion

Seems unsuitable as a source for as long as we don't know what's in it. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:54, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

• It's entirely suitable because the files contain the information cited. Pretending to not see the contents of a PDF is a really weak argument when others can see it.Fnagaton 11:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
• It's not unknown content when you download the file. Registration is free. Pretending to not see the contents of a PDF is a really weak argument when others can see it.Fnagaton 11:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• According to Wikipedia:Verifiability Access to sources

Some reliable sources may not be easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment, and a print source may be available only in university libraries or other offline places. Do not reject sources just because they are hard or costly to access. If you have trouble accessing a source, others may be able to do so on your behalf (see WikiProject Resource Exchange).

With my free JEDEC login I searched for JESD84 and found this JEDEC Standard. MultiMediaCard (MMC) Electrical Standard, High Capacity (MMCA, 4.2) JESD84-B42 Page 100.

SEC_COUNT
The device density is calculated from the register by multiplying the value of the register (sector count) by 512B/sector. The maximum density possible to be indicated is thus 2 Tera bytes (4 294 967 296 x 512B). The least significant byte (LSB) of the sector count value is the byte [212].

Get a free JEDEC login. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 22:58, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. That is useful information. It is a much clearer use of tera in the binary sense than the JEDEC definition of 'mega', which is very unclear. I have therefore replaced it with this one. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:13, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:13, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

references

• It's not dubious because all the links support the binary use of tera. Denying the facts, repeatedly, is WP:POINT and damages Wikipedia. Please just stop pushing your agenda.Glider87 (talk) 12:13, 1 August 2015 (UTC)