TB to ZB converter

What is a terabyte (TB) and zettabyte (ZB)?

A terabyte (TB) and zettabyte (ZB) are units of digital storage.

• Terabyte: In the International System of Units (SI), 1 TB equals $10^{12}$ bytes (1,000,000,000,000 bytes).
• Zettabyte: 1 ZB equals $10^{21}$ bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).

In the binary system (IEC standard):

• Tebibyte (TiB): 1 TiB equals $2^{40}$ bytes (1,099,511,627,776 bytes).
• Zebibyte (ZiB): 1 ZiB equals $2^{70}$ bytes (1,180,591,590,717,411,303,424 bytes).

The key difference lies in the base system: SI uses base-10, while IEC uses base-2.

Formula

SI (Decimal) conversion:

To convert TB to ZB:

IEC (Binary) conversion:

To convert TiB to ZiB:

Examples

Example 1: Converting TB to ZB (SI units)

Problem: A data center stores 250,000,000 TB of data. How many zettabytes is this? Solution:

Example 2: Converting TiB to ZiB (IEC units)

Problem: A supercomputer uses 3,221,225,472 TiB of memory. Convert this to zebibytes. Solution:

Example 3: Real-world comparison

• The global internet consumed approximately 3.5 ZB of data in 2023. In terabytes:

Historical context

• SI units: The prefixes “tera” ($10^{12}$) and “zetta” ($10^{21}$) were formalized in 1960 and 1991, respectively.
• Binary units: The IEC introduced “tebi” ($2^{40}$) and “zebi” ($2^{70}$) in 1998 to eliminate confusion between decimal and binary systems.

Notes

1. Storage marketing: Hard drives labeled as “1 TB” use SI units ($10^{12}$ bytes), but operating systems often display storage in TiB ($2^{40}$ bytes). This explains why a “1 TB” drive shows up as ~0.909 TiB.
2. Scientific precision: Use SI units for network speeds and IEC units for memory/storage in computing.
3. Avoid unit confusion: Misinterpreting TB (base-10) and TiB (base-2) can lead to errors. For instance, 1 TiB is ~9.1% larger than 1 TB.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many terabytes are in 5 zettabytes?

To convert ZB to TB:

How to convert 10,000 TiB to ZiB?

Use the IEC formula:

Why do storage devices show less capacity than advertised?

Manufacturers use SI units (TB = $10^{12}$ bytes), while operating systems use IEC units (TiB = $2^{40}$ bytes). For example:

A “1 TB” drive displays as ~0.909 TiB.

What is the difference between ZB and ZiB?

1 ZB ($10^{21}$ bytes) is smaller than 1 ZiB ($2^{70}$ bytes). Specifically:

How much data is 1 zebibyte in practical terms?

1 ZiB can store:

• 250 billion HD movies (4 GB each).
• 1.5 trillion copies of War and Peace (800 MB each).