Storage capacity

Storage capacity is the total available space of a data structure or a storage medium. Hosting providers often disclose traffic based on powers of 2, so for example 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 Bytes.

Megabyte

Megabyte (2^20 = 1.048.576 Bytes ca. 10^6 Bytes)

• 5 MB - The Bible as text
• 650 to 700 Megabytes - A CD-ROM

Gigabyte

Gigabyte (2^30 = 1.073.741.824 Bytes ca. 10^9 Bytes)

• 5 GB - A compressed movie

Terabyte

Terabyte (2^40 = 1.099.511.627.776 Bytes ca. 10^12 Bytes)

• 20 TB - The text size of the collection of the Library of Congress with about 20 million books (1963 - should now be up to 80 TB)

Petabyte

Petabyte (2^50 = 1.125.899.906.842.624 Bytes ca. 10^15 Bytes). The storage capacity of the world's largest data centers in late 2002 was between 1 and 10 petabytes.