Gigabytes to Exabytes (GB to EB)
1 gigabyte equals 1×10⁻⁹ exabytes exactly.
How to convert gigabytes to exabytes
To convert gigabytes to exabytes, multiply the number of gigabytes by 1×10⁻⁹. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply exabytes by 1,000,000,000.
exabytes = gigabytes × 1×10⁻⁹
Example: 10 gigabytes = 1×10⁻⁸ exabytes.
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
Gigabyte (GB)
1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal). Storage manufacturers and phone makers use this definition.
The gigabyte is where the decimal-versus-binary dispute turned into lawsuits. Drive makers advertise capacity in decimal units, so a 500 GB drive holds 500 billion bytes, but Windows reports sizes in binary units and shows about 465.7 of what it labels GB for the same drive. Early challenges against Western Digital and Seagate were settled, with Western Digital adding disclaimers that usable capacity may differ from the advertised figure.
A 2019 lawsuit was decided in the manufacturers' favor, with the court relying on the decimal definition. For scale, one gigabyte holds roughly an hour of standard-definition video at 2.2 Mbit/s. A single-layer DVD+R holds about 4.7 GB and a single-layer Blu-ray about 25 GB. RAM is still often sized in binary gigabytes, which the IEC would call gibibytes.
1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Gibibyte
Exabyte (EB)
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
Related conversions
- Exabytes to gigabytes (reverse)
- Gigabytes to bytes
- Gigabytes to kilobytes
- Gigabytes to megabytes
- Gigabytes to terabytes
- Gigabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to petabytes
- Gigabytes to kibibytes
- Gigabytes to mebibytes
- Gigabytes to gibibytes
- Gigabytes to tebibytes
- Gigabytes to kilobits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Bytes to exabytes
- Kilobytes to exabytes
- Megabytes to exabytes
- Terabytes to exabytes
See all digital storage units.