Yottabytes to Gigabytes (YB to GB)

1 yottabyte equals 1×10¹⁵ gigabytes exactly.

1 yottabyte = 1×10¹⁵ gigabytes

How to convert yottabytes to gigabytes

To convert yottabytes to gigabytes, multiply the number of yottabytes by 1×10¹⁵. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply gigabytes by 1×10⁻¹⁵.

gigabytes = yottabytes × 1×10¹⁵

Example: 10 yottabytes = 1×10¹⁶ gigabytes.

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

Yottabyte (YB)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

Gigabyte (GB)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.