Zettabyte

A zettabyte (symbol ZB, derived from the SI prefix "zetta"-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes. [ [http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/zettabyte-flood-predicted-2015/2008-01-31 Zettabyte flood predicted for 2015, Tom Burton (January 2008)] ] [ [http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012364 A zettabyte by 2010: Corporate data grows fiftyfold in three years, Lucas Mearian (March 2007)] ] [ [http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9067639 Study: Digital universe and its impact bigger than we thought, Lucas Mearian (March 2008)] ] [ [http://www.circleid.com/posts/813110_internet_traffic_graph_zettabyte/ Internet Traffic to Reach a Zettabyte by 2015, Says Study ] ]
* 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1000⁷, or 10²¹.

An alternative (rarely used) definition is [ [http://foldoc.org/index.cgi?query=zettabyte FOLDOC: Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing] ]

* 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424 bytes = 1024⁷, or 2⁷⁰.

The term "zebibyte", using a binary prefix, has been proposed as an unambiguous reference to the latter value.

How big is a zettabyte?

According to IDC, as of 2006 the total amount of digital data in existence was 0.161 zettabytes; the same paper estimates that by 2010, the rate of digital data generated worldwide will be 0.988 zettabytes per year.cite web
url = http://www.emc.com/about/destination/digital_universe/pdf/Expanding_Digital_Universe_IDC_WhitePaper_022507.pdf
title = The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010
accessdate = 2007-11-28
author = John F. Gantz
coauthors = David Reinsel, Christopeher Chute, Wolfgang Schlichting, John McArthur, Stephen Minton, irida Xheneti, Anna Toncheva, Alex Manfrediz
year = 2007
month = March
publisher = International Data Corporation, sponsored by EMC Corporation
quote = ]

A white paper released on March 11, 2008 from IDC revised the research firm's earlier estimates to show that by 2011, the amount of electronic data created and stored will grow to 10 times the 180 exabytes that existed in 2006, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of almost 60%.cite web
url = http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf
title = The Expanding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011
accessdate = 2008-03-12
author = John F. Gantz
coauthors = David Reinsel, Christopeher Chute, Wolfgang Schlichting, Stephen Minton, Anna Toncheva, Alex Manfrediz
year = 2008
month = March
publisher = International Data Corporation, sponsored by EMC Corporation
quote = ]

By 2011, there will be 1,800 exabytes of electronic data in existence, or 1.8 zettabytes (an exabyte is equal to 1 billion gigabytes).

IDC also acknowledged that it underestimated earlier digital data figures for 2007, saying the actual amount of data — 281 exabytes — is 10% greater than it had previously forecast in the first "Digital Universe" study. IDC said the bigger numbers were the result of faster growth in digital cameras and televisions, as well as a better understanding of data replication.cite web
url = http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9067639
title =Study: Digital universe and its impact bigger than we thought
accessdate = 2008-03-12
author = Lucas Mearian
coauthors =
year = 2008
month = March
publisher = ComputerWorld
quote = ]

Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes, if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio. This was done in response to a popular expression that states "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data (see exabyte for details). Liberman did "freely confess that maybe the authors [of the exabyte estimate] were thinking about text." [cite web | url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000087.html | title=Zettascale Linguistics | author=Mark Liberman | authorlink=Mark Liberman | date=November 3, 2003 | publisher=upenn.edu | accessdate=2007-02-17]

References to the word

The "Z" in Sun's ZFS file system originally stood for "zettabyte".

HP states that HP-UX 11i v3 "enables [...] 100 million zettabytes of storage", [HP-UX 11i v3 for HP Integrity and HP 9000 servers http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/458092-0-0-0-121.html] although the product release notes state that the maximum supported size for an individual filesystem is 40 TB (0.000 000 004 zettabytes); [cite web
url = http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5991-6469/ch06s06.html
title = HP-UX File Systems Architecture Enhancements
accessdate = 2007-11-27
publisher = Hewlett-Packard
quote = In HP-UX 11i v3, customers using VxFs file systems will have support for larger file systems up to 40TB, and individual files up to 16TB.] 25 quadrillion separate filesystems would be required to reach the stated number.

References