Petabyte (PB) - Unit Information & Conversion
🔄 Quick Convert Petabyte
What is a Petabyte?
Definition
A petabyte (PB) is a multiple of the byte unit for digital information storage. The prefix peta- (symbol P) is defined in the International System of Units (SI) as a multiplier of 1015 (1 quadrillion, or 1 followed by 15 zeros). Therefore, 1 petabyte = 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. This is equivalent to 1,000 terabytes (TB) or 1,000,000 gigabytes (GB). The petabyte is distinct from the pebibyte (PiB), which uses the binary prefix 'pebi-' established by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and equals 250 bytes.
History
The prefix 'peta-' originates from the Greek word "pente," meaning five (as 1015 = 10005), and was officially adopted as an SI prefix in 1975. In computing and data storage, the term 'petabyte' became necessary as data volumes grew exponentially beyond the terabyte scale in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Initially, like other SI prefixes (kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-), 'peta-' was sometimes ambiguously used by some to refer to the nearest power of 2 (250). However, the formal adoption of binary prefixes like 'pebi-' (Pi) by the IEC in 1998 aimed to resolve this confusion, clarifying that petabyte (PB) should strictly refer to 1015 bytes, while pebibyte (PiB) refers to 250 bytes. Despite standardization, the term PB is still sometimes used loosely in casual contexts, but in technical specifications and marketing, PB almost always means 1015 bytes.
Common Uses
Petabytes are used to quantify extremely large amounts of digital storage and data:
- Capacity of large-scale data centers, cloud storage platforms (e.g., Google Drive, AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage), and enterprise storage systems.
- Big data analytics, involving the processing and storage of vast datasets for scientific research (like genomics, particle physics, astronomy), business intelligence, and machine learning model training.
- National digital archives, large media libraries, and corporate data repositories storing historical records, high-resolution multimedia content, or extensive backups.
- High-performance computing (HPC) environments managing massive simulation outputs or experimental data collections.
- Large-scale video surveillance systems storing continuous high-resolution footage from numerous cameras.
- Quantifying the total amount of data generated globally or traversing major internet backbones over periods.
Petabyte Conversion Formulas
To Bit:
To Byte:
To Kilobit:
To Kilobyte:
To Megabit:
To Megabyte:
To Gigabit:
To Gigabyte:
To Terabit:
To Terabyte:
To Petabit:
To Exabit:
To Exabyte:
To Kibibit:
To Kibibyte:
To Mebibit:
To Mebibyte:
To Gibibit:
To Gibibyte:
To Tebibit:
To Tebibyte:
To Pebibit:
To Pebibyte:
To Exbibit:
To Exbibyte:
Frequently Asked Questions
There are exactly 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes (one quadrillion bytes, or 1015 bytes) in 1 petabyte (PB), according to the standard SI definition of the prefix 'peta-'.
Convert Petabyte
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