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Petabyte

Posted on One min read

I learned something about how much data we are generating everyday. I’d say it’s a fair guess that anyone who has access to the Internet has done some searches on Google.

Examples of the use of “petabyte” to describe data sizes in different fields are:

  • History: According to Kevin Kelly in The New York Times, “the entire [written] works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages” would amount to 50 petabytes of data.1

  • Computer hardware: Teradata Database 12 has a capacity of 50 petabytes of compressed data.[2][3]

  • Telecoms: AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day.[4]

  • Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 3 petabytes of data, and is growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month as of March, 2009.[5][6]

  • Internet: Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day.[7]

  • Physics: The 4 experiments in the Large Hadron Collider will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which will be distributed over the LHC Computing Grid.[8]

  • P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[9]

  • Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[10]

Petabyte – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.