A petabyte (PB) is a massive unit of digital storage equal to 1,024 terabytes (TB) or over 1 quadrillion bytes. It represents a scale of data rarely encountered by individual users but increasingly common in enterprise systems, cloud storage infrastructure, scientific research, and large-scale analytics platforms.
To put it in perspective, a petabyte could store:
Organizations in sectors like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, genomics, finance, and telecommunications routinely work with petabytes of data. Whether storing backup archives or processing real-time analytics, PB-level storage marks the threshold where data becomes a true operational asset — and a challenge to manage efficiently.
A byte is a standard unit of digital information made up of 8 bits. It's the basic building block for representing data in computers, where a single byte can typically store one character — such as a letter, number, or symbol.
Bytes are the foundation for measuring file size and storage capacity. Whether you're looking at the size of a text file or the storage available on a USB drive, the number is usually expressed in bytes or its larger multiples: kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and terabytes (TB).
In memory and storage systems, bytes play a critical role in data organization. Operating systems, applications, and databases are designed to read and write data in byte-sized chunks. As a result, understanding how bytes work is key to grasping how digital systems store, transfer, and manage information.
SI (Base 10):
Formula: Byte = Petabyte ÷ "Number of Petabytes in 1 Byte"
Calculation: 100 × 1000000000000000 = 100000000000000000 Byte
Binary (Base 2):
Formula: Byte = Petabyte ÷ "Number of Petabytes in 1 Byte"
Calculation: 100 × 1125899906842624 = 112589990684262400 Byte
| Petabyte | Byte (Binary) | Byte (SI) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,125,899,906,842,624 | 1,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 2 | 2,251,799,813,685,248 | 2,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 3 | 3,377,699,720,527,872 | 3,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 4 | 4,503,599,627,370,496 | 4,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 5 | 5,629,499,534,213,120 | 5,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 6 | 6,755,399,441,055,744 | 6,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 7 | 7,881,299,347,898,368 | 7,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 8 | 9,007,199,254,740,992 | 8,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 9 | 10,133,099,161,583,616 | 9,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 10 | 11,258,999,068,426,240 | 10,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 11 | 12,384,898,975,268,864 | 11,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 12 | 13,510,798,882,111,488 | 12,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 13 | 14,636,698,788,954,112 | 13,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 14 | 15,762,598,695,796,736 | 14,000,000,000,000,000 |
| 15 | 16,888,498,602,639,360 | 15,000,000,000,000,000 |