Bytes to Yottabytes (B to YB)
1 byte equals 1×10⁻²⁴ yottabytes exactly.
How to convert bytes to yottabytes
To convert bytes to yottabytes, multiply the number of bytes by 1×10⁻²⁴. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply yottabytes by 1×10²⁴.
yottabytes = bytes × 1×10⁻²⁴
Example: 10 bytes = 1×10⁻²³ yottabytes.
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
Yottabyte (YB)
10²⁴ bytes. Yotta was the largest SI prefix until ronna and quetta were added in 2022.
Yotta stands for the eighth power of 1,000 and was adopted in 1991, so a yottabyte is 10^24 bytes, or 1,000 zettabytes. It stood at the top of the SI prefix list until 2022, when the BIPM added ronna (10^27) and quetta (10^30), and the byte forms, ronnabyte and quettabyte, followed. The symbol is YB.
No storage system or traffic measure approaches this size. Global IP traffic in 2016 was only around 1.2 zettabytes a year, about one-thousandth of a yottabyte, so the unit has mostly served in forecasts and illustrations rather than measurement.
The binary yobibyte (YiB) is 2^80 bytes, which is 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes and about 20.9 percent more than a yottabyte. IEC standards define byte multiples up to this level, and a gap that wide is why the decimal and binary names are worth keeping apart.
1 yottabyte = 1×10²⁴ bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; Wikipedia: Zettabyte Era
Related conversions
- Yottabytes 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 yottabytes
- Megabytes to yottabytes
- Gigabytes to yottabytes
- Terabytes to yottabytes
See all digital storage units.