Terabytes

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A terabyte (derived from the prefix tera- and commonly abbreviated TB) is a measurement term for data storage capacity. The value of a terabyte is based upon a decimal radix (base 10) and is defined as one trillion (short scale) bytes, or 1000 gigabytes.

The number of bytes in a terabyte is sometimes stated to be approximately 1099 x 10⁹. This difference arises from a conflict between the long standing tradition of using binary prefixes and base 2 in the computer world, and the more popularly and intuitive decimal (SI) standard adopted widely in the industry. Standards organizations such as IEC, IEEE and ISO recommend to use the alternative term tebibyte (TiB) to signify the traditional measure of 1024⁴ bytes, or 1024 gibibytes, leading to the following definitions:

• According to the SI standard and current usage, a terabyte (TB) contains 1,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1000⁴ or 10¹² bytes.

• According to traditional and binary arithmetic, a terabyte contained 1,099,511,627,776 bytes = 1024⁴ or 2⁴⁰ bytes. This amount is now known instead as a tebibyte, to avoid confusion.

The capacities of computer storage devices are traditionally advertised using their SI standard values.

[edit] Terabytes in use

• The National Archives of Britain, which hold 900 years of written material, contains more than 580 terabytes of data<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6265976.stm</ref>
• The U.S. Library of Congress Web Capture team has claimed that "as of May 2007, the Library has collected more than 70 terabytes of data"<ref name="congress">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Ancestry.com claims 600 terabytes of genealogical data with the inclusion of US Census data from 1790 to 1930.<ref name="ancestry">Template:Cite web</ref>
• IsoHunt the BitTorrent Tracker claim they track over 291.09 TBs of Torrent addressed files.<ref name="hunt">Template:Cite web</ref>
• A human being's functional memory has been claimed as 1.25 terabytes, according to Raymond Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near, p. 126. However, this is not widely accepted.
• One hour of uncompressed Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV) consumes approximately 11.5 terabytes of data.
• A Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) can hold up to 3.9 terabytes.
• A Protein-coated disc (PCD) can hold 50 terabytes of data.

Personal computers and related devices such as TiVos containing a terabyte or more of storage space have recently become practical using combinations of high-capacity mass-market hard drives:

• In January 2007, Hitachi announced the first commercially available consumer 1 TB drive, which uses five 200 GB platters and perpendicular recording.Template:Fact
• LaCie has released a 2TB external hard drive.Template:Fact
• Rapidshare has over 1000 terabyte (1 petabyte) of space used for hosting files.<ref name="rapidshare">Template:Cite web</ref>
• As of 2007 the largest monolithic hard drive in the world, the Hitachi 7K1000, has 1 TB of data storage capacity. Seagate, also has a 1 TB drive, on paper it was the first TB drive, but Hitachi was the first to ship it.

• Bungie.net has announced that it has 70.9 terabytes in its Halo 3 Data bin.

• As of 2007 Mike Etoll owns one terabyte of disc space that will be used to edit his feature film Sewer Baby.

[edit] See also

• tebibyte
• terabit
• binary prefix
• orders of magnitude (data)
• Terabyte is also the name of a fictional colonial termite that has become highly specialized in the documentary film The Future is Wild
• Terabyte Interactive is also the name of a Macromedia Flash web design company based in Auckland, New Zealand. The company created the first CD-ROM pressed in New Zealand.[1]

[edit] References

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