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Data & storage

Just how much data is 10 petabytes?

Archives

10 PB

Scale

BYTES OF DATA

10 petabytes

Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000.

10 PBData
0
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
0
Bar length represents bytes. The physical sizes of devices are schematic; encoding and compression affect file sizes.

A little perspective

10 petabytes is about 10 times the data size of a petabyte archive.

Measurements, assumptions & sources +

10 petabytes

Data: 10 PB; definition.

Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000. KiB, MiB and GiB use powers of 1,024. The content of a file depends on encoding and compression.

NIST — SI conversion factors

A petabyte archive

Data: 1 PB; example.

A defined 1 PB archive before replication or redundancy overhead.

Defined examples — our methodology

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

Measurement details

Why these numbers?

Compare 10 petabytes with the data size of a petabyte archive. The notes below explain how each value was chosen.

10 petabytes

10 PB

Data · definition

Decimal kB, MB and GB use powers of 1,000. KiB, MiB and GiB use powers of 1,024. The content of a file depends on encoding and compression.

A petabyte archive

1 PB

Data · example

A defined 1 PB archive before replication or redundancy overhead.

Comparing
Data ↔ Data
Relative size
10 petabytes is about 10 times the data size of a petabyte archive. 10 petabytes is approximately 900% greater than the data size of a petabyte archive.

How to read the visual

The diagram uses the recorded measurements. Details outside the marked spans do not set the scale.

  • The data size of a petabyte archive: This is an illustrative comparison value, not a claim that every example is the same.

Data size depends on encoding and compression; decimal GB and binary GiB are different units.

1 × 10¹⁶ Bbytes
10,000,000 GBgigabytes
9,313,200 GiBgibibytes
10,000 TBterabytes

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