How much do you really know about the relative sizes of a petabyte and a megabyte? Could you meaningfully compare a petabyte of data to something in the real world? What are some examples of petabyte-scale data usage by major companies like Facebook or CERN? And how do megabytes relate to your personal photos, Spotify library or Netflix binging?
This guide will break down the key things you need to know about petabytes and megabytes – from their origins in computing history to differentiating between their vastly different scales. You‘ll gain new perspective on Big Data and everyday data, equipped for the era of zettabytes and brontobytes!
byte-sized data history
To fully grasp petabytes and megabytes, we first need to understand how units of digital information storage evolved.
It all started in the 1950s when the "bit" emerged – the basic unit of data in computing, representing a single 1 or 0 value in binary code. Bits on their own were pretty limited, so next the byte was introduced as the foundational data container:
- 1 byte = 8 bits
Then as digital storage advanced exponentially year after year, new prefixes were established to quantify bigger repositories of data:
| Unit | Total number of bytes |
|---|---|
| 1 Kilobyte (KB) | 1,000 bytes |
| 1 Megabyte (MB) | 1,000 KB (1 million bytes) |
| 1 Gigabyte (GB) | 1,000 MB |
| 1 Terabyte (TB) | 1,000 GB |
| 1 Petabyte (PB) | 1,000 TB (1 quadrillion bytes!) |
So each next level was 1000 times larger than the previous one – until reaching the still relatively unfathomable scale of the petabyte.
Let‘s investigate the petabyte and megabyte more closely, and why their vast difference in size matters.
Demystifying the massive petabyte
The "peta" prefix means 10 to the 15th power. That‘s an unfathomable quadrillion bytes or a million billion – more precisely:
1,000,000,000,000,000
Let‘s try visualizing some petabyte-sized analogies:
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1 petabyte could store 500 billion pages of standard printed text. If you stacked those pages, it would reach over 150 times the height of Mount Everest!
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5 petabytes could store all the words spoken by every human being in history. That‘s a lot of chatting!
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Just 20 petabytes could contain global email traffic for an entire year – showing how quickly our information society is scaling.
As you can see, the petabyte is an immense yardstick for academia, research and companies analyzing Big Data across industries like:
- Genomics – sequencing DNA datasets searching for health insights
- Astronomy – mapping galaxies with giant telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope estimated to generate 60 petabytes of images every year.
- Particle physics – the Large Hadron Collider produces over 1 petabyte of collision data every second!
So petabyte-scale data is essential for modeling intricate systems, finding insights in massive datasets with supercomputing, and pushing boundaries of scientific discovery.
It‘s also an unfortunate instrument of government surveillance – by some estimates US spy agencies have the capacity to store between 1 – 3 exabytes, over 1 trillion petabytes!
Sizing up the modest megabyte
In contrast to the mind-boggling petabyte, the humble megabyte seems miniscule. But it‘s still the standard unit for quantifying data storage on personal devices and everyday files. Consider:
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A 4 minute song encoded as an MP3 = approx. 4 megabytes
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The human genome, holding every bit of DNA that defines you = approx. 200 megabytes!
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A 45 minute episode of a TV show encoded at 720p resolution = approx. 350 megabytes
So don‘t underestimate the mighty megabyte – it still handily measures substantial datasets like genomes, multimedia libraries, app installs, and mobile data usage across smartphones, laptops and smart devices.
| Data Type | Size in MB |
|---|---|
| 1 photo (12 MP) | 4 MB |
| 1 minute of MP3 audio | 1-2 MB |
| 1 ebook (100,000 words) | 1-3 MB |
| 1 hour of standard definition video | 700 MB |
| Entire Wikipedia database dump | 15 GB (15,465 MB) |
As these examples illustrate, megabytes continue quantify significant amounts of personal daily data.
Contrasting petabyte big data with megabyte personal data
Given their scale differences, petabytes and megabytes have come to represent two broad classes of data usage:
Petabytes for organization-level big data:
- Social networks – Facebook generates an estimated 4 petabytes of data per day currently. Over a year that would amass to 1,460 exabytes!
- Search engines – Google is estimated to store 100 exabytes of indexed web page data to deliver fast search results – that‘s over 100 million petabytes!
- Research – the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope under development aims to store data at rates up to 160 petabytes per second when completed in 2030.
Megabytes for personal data storage and daily device usage:
- Laptops and phones – even baseline smartphone storage is now commonly 128+ gigabytes internally (over 130,000 MB)
- Streaming media – watching 4 hours of HD Netflix content consumes up to 5 gigabytes (5,000 MB)
- Social sharing – uploading a typical gallery of 40-50 photos to Facebook uses ~200 megabytes
- Audio playlists – a personalized collection of 3,000 songs requires at least 12,000 megabytes.
So in short, petabytes quantify incredibly immense infosphere; megabytes measure more modest, yet still substantial, personal digital lifestyles.
Bracing for the era of brontobytes
Reflecting relentless exponential growth, even bigger units now formally exist:
- 1 Zettabyte (ZB) = 1 billion (10^9) petabytes
- 1 Brontobyte (BB) = 1 trillion (10^12) petabytes!
Considering a smartphone now exceeds capabilities of a 1990s supercomputer that would have required megabytes of storage, perhaps we shouldn‘t be surprised if brontobytes one day become commonplace!
Key takeaways: separating the mega from the petabyte
Let‘s recap the key learnings about the mega and mighty spans of bytes:
- 1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes = 1 million gigabytes = 1 quadrillion megabytes
- Petabytes measure immense organizational and scientific datasets
- 1 megabyte = 1,000 KB = 1 million bytes
- Megabytes quantify everyday digital lifestyles – photos, media, documents
- 1 petabyte could store 500 billion book pages stacked over 150x Mt Everest‘s height
- 5 petabytes could store every human word ever spoken
- 1 megabyte holds a 4 minute MP3 song or a medium photo
I hope this comparison expanded your comprehension from modest megabytes to matrix-sized petabytes. Next time you stream an HD film or share vacation pics, you‘ll know precisely where those megabytes and gigabytes fit amidst immense scales of Big Data!
