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 megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital data equal to 1,024 kilobytes (KB) or 1,048,576 bytes. It is commonly used to represent file sizes, especially for images, documents, audio files, and smaller applications.
In practical terms, a high-quality JPEG photo might be around 2–5 MB, while a minute of MP3 audio at standard bitrate can take up about 1 MB. Email attachments, app downloads, and storage space are often measured in megabytes, making it a familiar benchmark for everyday computing.
Although gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB) are more frequently referenced for modern storage, megabytes still play an important role in performance-sensitive environments. They're useful for monitoring bandwidth usage, managing mobile data plans, and designing efficient digital systems where minimizing file size is critical.
SI (Base 10):
Formula: Megabyte = Petabyte ÷ "Number of Petabytes in 1 Megabyte"
Calculation: 100 × 1000000000 = 100000000000 Megabyte
Binary (Base 2):
Formula: Megabyte = Petabyte ÷ "Number of Petabytes in 1 Megabyte"
Calculation: 100 × 1073741824 = 107374182400 Megabyte
| Petabyte | Megabyte (Binary) | Megabyte (SI) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,073,741,824 | 1,000,000,000 |
| 2 | 2,147,483,648 | 2,000,000,000 |
| 3 | 3,221,225,472 | 3,000,000,000 |
| 4 | 4,294,967,296 | 4,000,000,000 |
| 5 | 5,368,709,120 | 5,000,000,000 |
| 6 | 6,442,450,944 | 6,000,000,000 |
| 7 | 7,516,192,768 | 7,000,000,000 |
| 8 | 8,589,934,592 | 8,000,000,000 |
| 9 | 9,663,676,416 | 9,000,000,000 |
| 10 | 10,737,418,240 | 10,000,000,000 |
| 11 | 11,811,160,064 | 11,000,000,000 |
| 12 | 12,884,901,888 | 12,000,000,000 |
| 13 | 13,958,643,712 | 13,000,000,000 |
| 14 | 15,032,385,536 | 14,000,000,000 |
| 15 | 16,106,127,360 | 15,000,000,000 |