Petabytes to Bits (PB to bit)
1 petabyte equals 8×10¹⁵ bits exactly.
How to convert petabytes to bits
To convert petabytes to bits, multiply the number of petabytes by 8×10¹⁵. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bits by 1.25×10⁻¹⁶.
bits = petabytes × 8×10¹⁵
Example: 10 petabytes = 8×10¹⁶ bits.
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
Petabyte (PB)
1,000 terabytes (10¹⁵ bytes). The scale of large data centers.
Peta entered the SI in 1975, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures approved peta and exa in its Resolution 10. A petabyte is 10 to the fifteenth bytes, or 1,000 terabytes, and the word is formed by attaching that prefix to byte, a term Werner Buchholz coined in June 1956 as a deliberate respelling of bite. The binary counterpart is the pebibyte: the IEC amendment published in January 1999 added pebi and exbi to the earlier binary names.
Decimal units dominate at this size: hard drives, SSDs, optical discs and network contracts all use powers of 1,000, and macOS, iOS, Android and Ubuntu follow suit. As an example of the size, one petabyte is about 2,000 years of MP3-encoded music at roughly one megabyte per minute. Binary use of the P symbol is less common than for smaller prefixes.
1 petabyte = 1×10¹⁵ bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Petabyte; BIPM: SI prefixes; Wikipedia: Binary prefix
Bit (bit)
The smallest unit of digital information: a single 0 or 1. Eight bits make a byte.
Bit is short for binary digit, and the word was coined by John W. Tukey. He shortened the phrase in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon first used it in print in his 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and credited Tukey with the word. The idea predates the name: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic measure of information in 1928, and punched cards, invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon in 1732 and developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, already stored one bit per hole position.
A bit holds one of two values, written 0 or 1, and everything digital is built from them. Eight bits make a byte, so a bit is one eighth of a byte. Symbols for the unit are not settled: the IEC standard uses bit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, with uppercase B reserved for the byte. The difference matters because internet speeds and file sizes are quoted in different units.
1 bit = 0.125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Bits to petabytes (reverse)
- Petabytes to bytes
- Petabytes to kilobytes
- Petabytes to megabytes
- Petabytes to gigabytes
- Petabytes to terabytes
- Petabytes to kibibytes
- Petabytes to mebibytes
- Petabytes to gibibytes
- Petabytes to tebibytes
- Petabytes to kilobits
- Petabytes to megabits
- Petabytes to gigabits
- Bytes to bits
- Kilobytes to bits
- Megabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to bits
- Terabytes to bits
- Kibibytes to bits
- Mebibytes to bits
- Gibibytes to bits
- Tebibytes to bits
- Kilobits to bits
- Megabits to bits
- Gigabits to bits
See all digital storage units.