What Does a Petabyte Look Like?

We know that all of the words ending in “byte” are measurements of data. They are used to explain how much data a device can store. For some, this is the extent of their knowledge. For many, it is difficult to truly comprehend what exactly those measurements “look like.”

You may be wondering what I mean by “look like.” If I were to ask you, “How big is an inch?” you would likely hold out your index finger and thumb to show me how big an inch is.

But what exactly does a petabyte look like? Because a petabyte is a measurement of data, it isn’t exactly something you could see. So, unlike an inch (a measurement of size), you couldn’t easily show me how much a “byte” of any sort is. But, if you could, what would it look like? How “big” would it be?

It would look like a lineup of 48,000 miles of your typical-sized (8.5 inch) photos. That would nearly take you around the circumference of the globe, twice.

However, I suppose it is truly hard for us (being small humans) to imagine how big the Earth is. That’s like telling an ant to imagine how big the Atlantic Ocean is. The whole thing isn’t in his line of sight, so how is he supposed to really KNOW?

If you’re feeling like the ant, we can relate it to something you are more familiar with. You likely listen to music periodically throughout your day. Now imagine music playing all day every day, for the rest of your life. That seems like it would be a lot of music. But it’s not, in comparison to a petabyte. A petabyte of songs would play continuously for 2,000 years. So, to listen to a petabyte of data, you would have to spend your whole life listening to music, all the time…and then be reincarnated 24 times.

Still having trouble comprehending? Well then we can relate it to something you’re even more familiar with: your own brain. One petabyte is roughly the equivalent of 800 human’s memories. This means that the capacity of your memory is roughly 1.25 terabytes. But don’t feel bad…this is actually A LOT of data (meaning your brain retains a great deal of data/information in a lifetime). It just may not seem like it is when you consider that Walmart would need roughly 2,000 of you to retain all the information that is contained in their databases.

So maybe this is actually why they call it Big Data.