Exabytes to Bytes (EB to B)

1 exabyte equals 1×10¹⁸ bytes exactly.

1 exabyte = 1×10¹⁸ bytes

How to convert exabytes to bytes

To convert exabytes to bytes, multiply the number of exabytes by 1×10¹⁸. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bytes by 1×10⁻¹⁸.

bytes = exabytes × 1×10¹⁸

Example: 10 exabytes = 1×10¹⁹ bytes.

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

Exabyte (EB)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000 petabytes (10¹⁸ bytes). Used for global internet traffic and very large data centers.

Exa comes from the SI prefix for the sixth power of 1,000, which the metric system adopted in 1975, so one exabyte is the decimal quantity 10^18 bytes, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. That is 1,000 petabytes, and it equals 8 x 10^18 bits. The symbol is EB, and it should not be confused with the binary exbibyte.

The exbibyte (EiB) is 2^60 bytes, which is 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes, about 15.3 percent more than an exabyte. Hard drive makers and networking use decimal definitions, so an exabyte is the usual unit for fleet-scale storage and traffic. Wikipedia illustrates the size as roughly global monthly internet traffic in 2004. By 2016 Cisco estimated global IP traffic at about 96 exabytes per month, roughly 1.2 zettabytes per year.

A 64-bit address space spans 2^64 bytes, which is 16 exbibytes, a binary quantity that is a different size from 16 exabytes.

1 exabyte = 1×10¹⁸ bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; Wikipedia: Zettabyte Era

Byte (B)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.