Talk:Zettabyte

Untitled
Discussion about centralization took place at Talk:Binary prefix.

binary definition?
Gimmetrow, I am disputing the binary definition of the zettabyte. (Same applies to yottabyte). Is there a source for these? Thunderbird2 (talk) 20:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I really have no idea what you're asking. Are you really disputing that the IEC noted an ambiguity? Gimmetrow 20:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, perhaps I was too cryptic - I'll try to explain more carefully. What I mean is that a number of standards bodies define the zettabyte in the decimal sense, ie, 1 ZB = 10007 B, but I know of none that define it in the binary sense (which would mean 1 ZB = 10247 B). Nor does the article cite any sources that use ZB in the binary sense.  I'm not sure, but my suspicion is that we have just invented a definition that wasn't there before - something we should try to avoid. Thunderbird2 (talk) 20:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's a jargon list using it that way. Gimmetrow 21:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * A search for "zettabyte" didn't pick up anything. Can you point me to where it's used in that link? Thunderbird2 (talk) 21:52, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Search for zetta. Gimmetrow 22:19, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see. But it looks to me that they are just extrapolating from established uses of other (smaller) prefixes.  The table is followed by the text "The prefixes zetta-, yotta-, zepto-, and yocto- have been included in these tables purely for completeness and giggle value".  I think we need to do better than that - somewhere that actually uses them. Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I found this and this. They are definitions rather than examples of actual usage though, and also likely to be straight extrapolations from exabyte. Do you think they are enough? Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course it's probably an extrapolation. The point is that the prefixes can go up by 1000 or 1024, so if precision mattered it could be either. At this point in time, anyone actually using the term "zettabyte" is almost certainly making an order of magnitude estimate, and a 20% 2.4% variation doesn't matter. You might want to work on Binary_prefix, if you want more people to see this. Gimmetrow 22:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * My point is that the article gives the impression that the two definitions are equally valid, whereas all uses of ZB that I can find are all in the decimal sense. I think the article should be updated to reflect the assymetry. Agreed? Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:52, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. Gimmetrow 22:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

OK I'll do that. For the record, here are some of the decimal uses I found:    Thunderbird2 (talk) 22:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

removed statement by Bret Swanson
Removed the following:

According to Bret Swanson, United States internet traffic could reach 1 zettabyte by 2015.

A blog entry--and yes, I'll be a little picky and say especially a blog entry on the Discovery Institute site--is not a notable source, and there's no basis for his estimate given there. It's not an improbable guess; it's just not a notable one.--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I concur. Also, wikipedia is not a crystal ball.  Predictions of the future are notoriously unreliable, and should only be included in wikipedia when it's relevant to the subject, and i don't think this qualifies.  —fudoreaper (talk) 06:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

References to the word
"The Z in Sun's ZFS file system originally stood for zettabyte, although it only allows a maximum volume size of 16 Exbibytes."

ZFS actually allows only files up to 16 EiB but volumes up to 218 EiB, which is actually 256 Zettabytes. Maybe someone could change that on the site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.54.6.204 (talk) 19:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Which "site" do you mean? Do you mean this article?
 * If you have a reference for max ZFS volume size, you should definitely go ahead and change the article.--NapoliRoma (talk) 19:50, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Note that adding ZFS in this article is off-topic as this article is about the number, not the file system. If you think it is confusing for the reader you could consider a disambiguation page.—Ash (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

8,000,000 petabytes = 8 zettabytes
Going from 8,000,000 petabytes to 1.2 zettabytes is not an increase. I realize this is a direct quote from the sited source. Maybe it misquoted the International Data Corporation's annual survey. I can't find this survey to confirm this. Maybe the survey said 8,000 petabytes. Should Wikimedia perpetuate this error?

HartleySherwood (talk) 18:25, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's unlikely they knew their prefixes well - they said that a zettabyte is a million terabytes. I suggest tracking the survey, as that article seems to be full of incorrect information. --174.113.156.80 (talk) 17:37, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

misleading table entry
The "binary usage" column of the table gives the impression that 1 ZB = 2^70 bytes. No reference is cited for this use either in the template or in the zettabyte article. Indeed the zettabyte article does not even mention this use. The template needs to be edited to avoid giving this misleading impression. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:31, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


 * This reference says "exabyte EB s60 bytes. This reference lists yottabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, gigabyte etc all with power of two values. I must remind you that you have been told not to push your PoV about binary prefixes on Wikipedia. Glider87 (talk) 06:25, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Removed statement

 * A revised theory is that if you made an audio recording of the conscience and words of all humanity since the dawn of time and multiplied the data 4 times you would reach 1 ZiB.[]

Unclear, and cited ref was to [ this blog] by which does not seem notable and just contains a bare assertion without explanation of where the number comes from. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 20:39, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

First proposed store of zettabyte capacity
While I understand some have reported that the NSA data center would be able to hold five zettabytes this is obviously not true.

A zettabyte is one billion terrabytes. If we assume a terrabyte hard drive costs $100, this would cost $500 billion. To put this into perspective, the total US budget is on the order of 4 trillion dollars. This means the government would need to spend about 10% of the annual budget just on hard drives for the storage facility. The wikipedia article on the data center states that the facility will cost 1.5 billion dollars to build and another 2 billion for hardware and maintenance. Even if the government buys these hard drives at a discount, there is no way they could afford that much storage.

Finally, according to an article on pcworld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/129558/article.html), hard rive failure rates are around 2% annually (on the low end). This would mean that 100 million hard drive would need to replaced annually, which works out to about a quarter of a million hard drives daily. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.143.18.92 (talk) 21:29, 18 June 2013 (UTC)


 * You're making a few assumptions, some justified, but some possibly not. Even if accurate, it would be synthesis to use that to contradict the 5 ZB assertion.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 00:00, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Rough estimate for blu-ray gives 50$ per terabyte. Other technologies (tape drive for example) can be even cheeper. Valodzka (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Decimal vs binary meanings of 'terabyte'
There is a discussion of the decimal and binary meanings of 'terabyte' at Talk:Terabyte. The discussion has possible implications for this page. If you wish to comment, please do so on the terabyte talk page. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 3 one external links on Zettabyte. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.uefi.org/learning_center/UEFI_MBR_Limits_v2.pdf
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/expanding-digital-idc-white-paper.pdf
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://hmi.ucsd.edu/pdf/HMI_2009_ConsumerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:50, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

152 million years of UHD 8K video format ???
I think there was too many zeros in this calculation? 8*10^21 bits / (152,000,000 years * 31536000 sec/year) = 1668936 bits/sec  or 1668 kbps which is not even enough for a 1080p video, let alone 8K UHD.

I do not know the bitrate of 8K UHD format but the video+audio bit rate of a BluRay movie (not a BluRay-rip) is around 37000 kbps, so instead we get: 8*10^21 bits / (37000000 bits/sec * 31536000 sec/year) = 6,856,171 years

So we could change it to 6.8 million years of BluRay movie? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Einyen (talk • contribs) 15:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)