Petabytes to Megabits (PB to Mb)
1 petabyte equals 8,000,000,000 megabits exactly.
How to convert petabytes to megabits
To convert petabytes to megabits, multiply the number of petabytes by 8,000,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabits by 1.25×10⁻¹⁰.
megabits = petabytes × 8,000,000,000
Example: 10 petabytes = 80,000,000,000 megabits.
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
Megabit (Mb)
1,000,000 bits (125,000 bytes). Internet speeds are advertised in megabits per second.
Megabit is the unit behind most internet plans: speeds are quoted in megabits per second, while files are sized in megabytes. Since a byte is eight bits, a megabit is one eighth of a megabyte, which is 125,000 bytes in decimal units, and an advertised speed in Mbit/s therefore looks eight times larger than the same rate in megabytes per second. Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples.
Writing it is tricky. The IEC symbol is Mbit and the IEEE recommends Mb, but a capital M with lowercase b is easy to confuse with MB, the megabyte. The binary counterpart, the mebibit, is rarely used. Memory chips are sometimes sized in megabits too, so check which unit a spec sheet is using before comparing numbers.
1 megabit = 125,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; Wikipedia: Megabit
Related conversions
- Megabits to petabytes (reverse)
- Petabytes to bytes
- Petabytes to kilobytes
- Petabytes to megabytes
- Petabytes to gigabytes
- Petabytes to terabytes
- Petabytes to bits
- Petabytes to kibibytes
- Petabytes to mebibytes
- Petabytes to gibibytes
- Petabytes to tebibytes
- Petabytes to kilobits
- Petabytes to gigabits
- Bytes to megabits
- Kilobytes to megabits
- Megabytes to megabits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Terabytes to megabits
- Bits to megabits
- Kibibytes to megabits
- Mebibytes to megabits
- Gibibytes to megabits
- Tebibytes to megabits
- Kilobits to megabits
- Gigabits to megabits
See all digital storage units.