Zettabytes to Megabytes (ZB to MB)

1 zettabyte equals 1×10¹⁵ megabytes exactly.

1 zettabyte = 1×10¹⁵ megabytes

How to convert zettabytes to megabytes

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

megabytes = zettabytes × 1×10¹⁵

Example: 10 zettabytes = 1×10¹⁶ megabytes.

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

Zettabyte (ZB)

ComputingCurrent unit

10²¹ bytes. Used for estimates of global data volumes.

Global data volumes are now large enough that the zettabyte, 10^21 bytes, has become a headline unit. It is decimal: 1,000 exabytes, or a trillion gigabytes, and the symbol is ZB. The prefix zetta was added to the SI in 1991 alongside yotta, and the binary counterpart is the zebibyte (ZiB), 2^70 bytes, which is about 18 percent larger.

Wikipedia's article on the Zettabyte Era puts the point when total digital data first passed one zettabyte at 2012. It also records Cisco's estimate that global IP network traffic first topped one zettabyte in 2016, at about 1.2 ZB, or roughly 96 exabytes a month. IDC forecasts quoted there projected annual data generation reaching 175 ZB by 2025, though such figures are estimates of data created rather than data kept, and they vary between analysts.

Almost nothing is stored in single zettabyte devices, so the unit matters mainly for industry totals.

1 zettabyte = 1×10²¹ bytes (exactly).

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

Megabyte (MB)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000,000 bytes (decimal). A typical MP3 song is 3–5 MB; a smartphone photo is 2–5 MB.

Megabyte started out as informal jargon. Base-1,024 usage grew because 1,024 is close to 1,000 and convenient for binary multiples. In 1999 the IEC standardized binary prefixes, assigning megabyte to 10 to the sixth bytes and mebibyte to 2 to the twentieth. By the end of 2009 the IEEE, the EU, ISO and NIST had adopted that standard, though the word still carries different meanings in practice.

The famous 1.44 MB floppy disk is a mixed case: it counts 1,024,000 bytes per megabyte, and it actually holds 1,474,560 bytes. Today most storage media and networking use the decimal definition, while Windows uses the binary one for memory such as RAM. For scale, a PlayStation 2 memory card held 8 MB, the plain text of Moby Dick runs to 1.192 MB, and one megabyte holds about one minute of 128 kbit/s MP3 audio.

1 megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Megabyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.