Everyday quantities

A petabyte archive vs An exabyte archive

What are they, and what does the difference actually look like?

Two things. One honest scale.

Meet the pair

What these two things are

A petabyte archive

A petabyte archive is a digital storage system designed to retain very large collections of data for long-term access.

1 PBData

An exabyte archive

An exabyte archive is a digital storage system capable of holding extremely large datasets, often used by major organisations or data centres.

1 EBData

An exabyte archive has about 1,000 times the data of A petabyte archive.

Linear measure
BYTES OF DATA1 PBToo small to see at this scale1 EB
Bar length represents bytes. The physical sizes of devices are schematic; encoding and compression affect file sizes.
Measurements, assumptions & sources +

A petabyte archive

A defined 1 PB archive before replication or redundancy overhead.

Defined examples — our methodology

The marked data is calibrated. Unmeasured illustration details are representative.

An exabyte archive

A defined 1 EB decimal data amount; no claim about a named service.

Defined examples — our methodology

The marked data is calibrated. Unmeasured illustration details are representative.

Change the comparison

Put something else beside it.

Measurement details

Why these numbers?

The visual compares data with data. The records below preserve each value’s basis and caveats.

A petabyte archive

1 PB

Data · example

A defined 1 PB archive before replication or redundancy overhead.

An exabyte archive

1 EB

Data · example

A defined 1 EB decimal data amount; no claim about a named service.

Comparing
Data ↔ Data
Relative size
An exabyte archive is larger on this measurement by a factor of about 1,000.

How to read the visual

The labelled spans and stored measurements determine the scale; unmeasured illustration details do not.

  • A petabyte archive is labelled example; treat the displayed value as a comparison anchor rather than false precision.
  • An exabyte archive is labelled example; treat the displayed value as a comparison anchor rather than false precision.

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