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What is Petabyte?
A petabyte is a unit of measurement in computer science that is used to store a very large amount of digital data. It is used in large data centers for storing huge amounts of data. One PB is equal to 1024 terabytes (TB) or one quadrillion (10^15) bytes. A petabyte is represented by an uppercase "PBâ.
The "peta" in petabyte refers "to the fifth" power, where 1,000 ^ 5 = 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
Example:1. Video streaming services like Netflix and YouTube use petabytes of storage capacity to store large amounts of videos.
2. Social media services like Facebook and Instagram use petabytes of storage capacity to store information of a user, like videos and photos.
How Big is a Petabyte?
- 1 petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes (TB)
- 1 petabyte is equal to 2 to the power of 50 bytes
- 1 petabyte could store around 250 million songs or 500 billion pages of text
- 1 petabyte could store over 200 million 5 MB photos
- 1 petabyte could store about 13.3 years' worth of HD video content
- One thousand petabytes equals one exabyte.

Real-World Data Storage Capacity
The following table shows the approximate size of real-world data storage capacity.
Item | Approximate Size |
---|---|
Text on an average print page converted to HTML | 1 kilobyte |
Typewritten page | 2 kilobytes |
Short novel | 1 megabyte |
MP3 music file | 2 megabytes to 5 megabytes |
Books filling a pickup truck | 1 gigabyte |
Printed paper from 50,000 trees | 1 terabyte |
Data from all U.S. academic libraries | 2 petabytes |
All human-spoken words | 5 exabytes |
Note − For units like liters or meters, we understand the quantities they represent. But digital units of measurement are abstract. Comparing them to physical sizes can give an idea about their true scale.
Difference between Petabytes and Petabits
A bit is considered the smallest unit of information in computer science. It can be either 1 or 0. 256 (28) possible states are required to display a character that humans can read, so 8 bits are grouped to form 1 byte. Bits are used for data transmission and consumption speeds, while bytes indicate memory size.
A Petabit is a unit of measurement for digital storage. It is based on âBinary multiples of bitsâ where one petabyte is equal to 8 petabits. The symbol of petabyte is âPbâ
The formula to convert from petabits to petabytes: Petabytes = Petabits divided by 8
FAQs on Petabyte
1. What is the difference between a terabyte and a petabyte?
A terabyte (TB) and a petabyte (PB) are both units of digital data storage, but they differ in size. Tera- means 1,000,000,000,000; a Terabyte is a trillion bytes. Peta- means 1,000,000,000,000,000; a Petabyte is 1,024 Terabytes.
2. What is a petabyte used for?
A petabyte is a unit of data storage used to measure extremely large amounts of digital information like cloud servers or data centers, where large volumes of data like scientific research, big data analytics, and video archives are stored.
3. What can you do with one petabyte?
A petabyte holds the equivalent of about one billion books. Put another way, this amount of data equals roughly 500 billion pages of text.
4. How many petabytes is YouTube?
YouTube Storage Capacity uses about 100 petabytes of data storage, equivalent to 100,000,000 gigabytes.
5. What is 1000 petabytes called?
One thousand petabytes is equal to one Exabyte, or one billion gigabytes (GB), representing a huge amount of data storage.
6. What are some examples of everyday situations where petabytes of data are generated?
A petabyte storage is commonly used in industries like Telecommunications, Search Motors, Databases, File Sharing, and Streaming.