Data Powers of Ten

I found this old web page on my website freedom on the wayback machine. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://freedom.artm.ulst.ac.uk/~antonh

it really must have been a while ago! http://web.archive.org/web/20010518112023/freedom.artm.ulst.ac.uk/~antonh/

I havent checked any of the links but I always thought this was a great explaination….anto

The following list is a collection of estimates of the quantities of data contained by the various media. Each is rounded to be a power of 10 times 1, 2 or 5. Most of the links are to small images. Suggestions and contributions are welcomed, especially picture files or pointers to pictures, and disagreements are accepted at roy@caltech.edu. The numbers quoted are approximate. In fact a kilobyte is 1024 bytes not 1000 bytes but this fact does not keep me awake at night.

The etymology of these words used for very large numbers is explained here.


Warning: This page was created in 1995. Many of the numbers are out of date.


a well known search engine uses the same idea:

Googlebyte (10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)

People often get KB and Kb or MB and Mb mixed up

A B is a byte

a b is a bit

there are 8 bits in a byte

therefore there are 8Kb in a KB