Powers of 10 | |||
When we talk about volumes of information such as megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes, it is hard to fathom exactly what those massive numbers mean. Here are some rough approximations (say, to within an order of magnitude) of how much textual information corresponds to each of the storage quantities [used in common computer science]. |
QUANTITY | BYTES | AMOUNT OF TEXTUAL INFORMATION |
1 byte | 100 | One character | |
1 kilobyte | 103 | One typed page | |
1 megabyte | 106 | Two or three novels | |
1 gigabyte | 109 | A departmental library or a large personal library | |
1 terabyte | 1012 | The library of a major academic research university | |
1 petabyte | 1015 | All printed material in all libraries in North America | |
1 exabyte | 1018 | All words ever printed throughout human history | |
1 zettabyte | 1021 | — |