pcharouz

Everybody probably knows bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes. But not so many know about terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, etc.
So I decided to make a FAQ about this topic and
here is how it goes

bit- the lowest unit, binary, thus 2 positions: 0 and 1, or 'on' and 'off'.
byte - 1 byte = 8 bits.
kilobyte (kB) - 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, or 2^10 bytes.
megabyte (MB) - 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes. 1 mp3 file is about 2-5MB.
gigabyte (GB) - 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes. The most commonly used unit for HD's today.
terabyte (TB) - 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes. Mainly used when talking about servers and not too common in personal computers.
petabyte (PB) - 1 petabyte = 1024 terrabytes
exabyte (EB) - 1 exabyte = 1024 petabytes
zettabyte (ZB) - 1 zettabyte = 1024 exabytes
yottabyte (YB) - 1 yottabyte = 1024 zettabytes. The highest unit I found; probably not going to be used untill the next decade or so.

Basically, each step up the ladder is an additional 10 powers of two. Thus, a kB is 2^10 (=1024) bytes, while a MB is 2^10 kB, or 2^20 bytes.

To show how large the units actually are, an avarage 160 gigabyte harddrive would be 0.000000000000160 yottabytes, and 1 yottabyte = 1125899906842624 gigabytes.

Pm me if I should add something.

Chozart

Nice little FAQ. Good to know for when those Yottabyte drives come out.... Probably half of it will be needed for the then-current Windows version ;)

frosty15

I think the first terabyte drives, which will prolly come out sometime near christmas, will be a big step.

Holographic storage will have to be in its second or third generation to reach anywhere near a petabyte of storage in one unit.

By then, games will prolly be of broadcast quality.
Pity VR hasn't grown the way that was originally conceptualised thought, a broadcast quality fully VR immersive battleground would be litterally "out of this world".

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stargate125645

Nice explanation. You may want to cover how some comapnies use 1000 instead of 1024 to convert, such as Western Digital, so the numbers they list aren't entirely accurate.

You may also want to list the abbreviations for bit and byte. Mentioning the units of common rates could also be benefitial, such as kb/s for kilobits per second and kB for kilobytes per second (e.g. download rate can be in kilobits per second).

I would also add in SI and US Customary units such as milimeters, centimeters, meters, inches, feet, and yards so that things such as form factors and peripheral dimensions can be easily converted if you are purchasing overseas, etc.

Also, I wouldn't generalize the size of mp3 files from 2-5 MB, as it depends upon the sample rate and the bit rate.

You have used "pentabyte" instead of "petabyte" in your introduction, so you may want to fix that spelling error.

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Chozart

Actually, it is not entirely correct to state that using multiples of 1,000 is wrong. It's a different method, but acceptable as a SI prefix. Commonly, in computer terminology we use binary prefixes (powers of two), but the use of SI prefixes (1,000s, and powers of 10) is also used, esp. by hard drive manufacturers to inflate their perceived size of hard drives.

Thus, they'd call a drive that can contain 100,000,000,000 bytes a 100GB drive (conform to the SI prefix system), while the number of bytes that equals 100GB is 107,374,182,400 (using the binary prefix system), a difference of 7,374,182,400 bytes, or 6.86GB.

And 'petabyte' is the correct spelling. not to worry

stargate125645

The most I've seen is 750GB on one HDD, so I can only say that you should purchase as many 750GB HDDs as possible, or figure out when larger ones are coming out and see if its worth waiting for.

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pcharouz

hmm, the mp3 size was just to compare, to people so they know about how much they take up. I might do the download speeds tomorow, I am tired today, and I dont know if feet, yeards, meters, and centimeters have a lot to do with computers..... thanks for the info thou

Squeeky

Half of an eight-bit byte (four bits) is sometimes called a nibble (sometimes spelled nybble) How cool is that bit random but i only just found that out

pcharouz

sry, I am reading that over and over and I cant understand it.

rabidgnome229

just as 8 bits is a byte, 4 bits is a nibble, 16? bits is a word. they are just names for x number of bits