Bytes to Terabits (B to Tb)
1 byte equals 8×10⁻¹² terabits exactly.
How to convert bytes to terabits
To convert bytes to terabits, multiply the number of bytes by 8×10⁻¹². This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply terabits by 125,000,000,000.
terabits = bytes × 8×10⁻¹²
Example: 10 bytes = 8×10⁻¹¹ terabits.
Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.
About these units
Byte (B)
Eight bits. The basic addressable unit of memory and storage.
Werner Buchholz coined the word byte in June 1956 while working on the IBM Stretch computer; the earliest supporting document is dated 11 June 1956. He respelled bite on purpose, in his words to avoid accidental mutation to bit. At that stage a byte was any group of one to six bits, and a move to eight bits was considered in August 1956 and built into the design soon after. Louis Dooley later claimed he had coined the term around 1956 or 1957 on the SAGE project at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where it meant groups of four bits, but Fred Brooks credited Buchholz.
IBM's System/360 adopted the eight-bit byte, and its success made that size the standard. The symbol is a capital B, and the unambiguous alternative is octet, a word used in protocol standards such as RFC 791. A byte can hold 256 distinct values, enough for a letter of the alphabet in a simple character set, which is why files and memory addresses are counted in bytes.
The byte is the reference unit for digital storage on this site.
Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix
Terabit (Tb)
10¹² bits (125 GB).
Network engineers reach for the terabit because link speeds are quoted in bits per second, and Wikipedia's article on the bit confirms that transfer rates conventionally use decimal SI multiples. One terabit is exactly 10^12 bits, which at eight bits per byte is 125,000,000,000 bytes, or 125 gigabytes. Tera, adopted into the SI in 1960, is the first prefix after giga.
The commonly used symbol is Tbit, and the IEEE 1541 standard recommends lowercase b, giving Tb. That shorthand is risky because capital B means byte, a factor of eight apart. In the IEC naming, a terabit is a decimal unit; its binary counterpart, the tebibit, is 2^40 bits, about 10 percent larger.
Because it is quoted in bits, the terabit suits data rates, where terabits per second describe very high-capacity links, and it is eight times smaller than the terabyte.
1 terabit = 125,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; Wikipedia: Binary prefix
Related conversions
- Terabits to bytes (reverse)
- Bytes to kilobytes
- Bytes to megabytes
- Bytes to gigabytes
- Bytes to terabytes
- Bytes to bits
- Bytes to petabytes
- Bytes to kibibytes
- Bytes to mebibytes
- Bytes to gibibytes
- Bytes to tebibytes
- Bytes to kilobits
- Bytes to megabits
- Kilobytes to terabits
- Megabytes to terabits
- Gigabytes to terabits
- Terabytes to terabits
See all digital storage units.