A terabyte (TB) is a large data storage capacity allocation most often applied to hard drives. Hard drives are essential to computer systems as they store the operating system, programs, files, and data necessary for the computer to function. Depending on the type of storage being measured, it can be equal to 1,000 gigabytes (GB) or 1,024 GB; disk storage is generally measured as the former, while processor storage as the latter.
A terabyte is a measure of the storage capacity of a computer’s hard drive.
In the late 1980s, the average home computer system had a single hard drive with a capacity of around 20 megabytes (MB). In the mid-1990s, the average capacity increased to around 80 MB. A few years later, operating systems alone required more space than that, while several hundred megabytes represented average storage capacity. As of 2005, computer buyers think in terms of hundreds of gigabytes, and this is already giving way to even more storage.
At first, the average home computer was around 20 megabytes; a terabyte is equal to 1,048,576 megabytes.
With the advent of graphics, video, and music files, home studios, painting and photography programs, and advanced desktop publishing applications, storage seems to be as smart an investment as real estate. The cost of hard drives has dropped dramatically over the years and continues to drop even as speed and reliability increase. With the drop in price, more people are installing RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) to provide not only storage space, but also redundancy, error checking, performance enhancement, and backup. A RAID is a series of hard drives that work together as a single storage unit. Today, a RAID array can easily exceed the 1 terabyte limit.
Storage space is measured in bytes, which are made up of 8 bits of data. However, when measuring the number of bytes in a kilobyte (KB) or larger unit, there may be differences depending on the measurement standard used. Processor or virtual storage is usually measured using binary:
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
1024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte
1,048,576 (1,024 2 ) megabytes = 1 terabyte
At the opposite extreme, starting with the smallest data units of measure, one octet or eight bits are needed to make a byte. Bits are binary digits of 1 or 0 (ones or zeros). A string of eight forms the single byte that represents a single character, such as a letter or punctuation mark. More than a trillion bytes, or exactly 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, makes a terabyte, or more than eight trillion bits!
Disk storage space is generally measured using the International System of Units (SI). According to this standard, 8 bits still equals 1 byte, but 1000 bytes equals 1 KB. This means that a 1 terabyte hard drive contains 1000 GB or 10 12 bytes.
While the terabyte represents a lot of storage, the petabyte is expecting a bit more. The petabyte is made up of 1024 (or 1000) terabytes.
Tera means monster in Greek, while the word byte was coined in 1956 by Werner Buchholz.
A gigabyte can contain information equivalent to about 1,000 thick books.
