Y is for …

Yottabyte

You may not be too familiar with this term, but you will be within the next year or so I think.

Disk space is measured in bytes, and each term used is a multiple of 1000 of the previous one. So we have:

• Bytes

• Kilobytes (1000 bytes)

• Megabytes (1000 kB)

• Gigabytes (1000 Mb)

• Terabytes (1000 Gb)

• Petabytes (1000 Tb)

• Exabytes (1000 Pb)

• Zettabytes (1000 Eb)

• Yottabytes (1000 Zb)

This is a huge amount of storage. When I started in IT (in the late 80s) a 40 Mb hard drive was huge. Less than 30 years later and we’re talking about something 6 with 18 zeros (Ie 6 000 000 000 000 000 000) bigger!

Interestingly, the name comes from the Star Wars character, Yoda.