So, how big is an exabyte?

[Pedersen]

I got bored, and did some math. One exabyte is fricking huge.

Here's the scale: Drives were measured in kilobytes, then megabytes, then gigabytes, now terabytes. Next up is petabytes, and then comes exabytes.

One exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. That 10^18 bytes. But how big is this?

If you wanted to store one exabyte of data, then that would take 500,000 2T drives. A typical server rack could handle 15 of them across (oriented vertically), and store 20 rows of that. To store all 500,000 drives, you would need 1,667 racks. Mind you, that would not store any servers. You just have the drives sitting in there.

If you need to send one exabyte of data, then your fastest method is to use a Boeing 747, loaded up with DVDs. Using 4.7G DVDs in slimline jewel cases, you can fit 74T of data in one 747. So, one cross country trip, you get 74T of data delivered.

So, to send that exabyte of data using 747s, you would need to fill up 13,513 747s with those DVDs. Measured end to end, those 747s would be 640.25 miles (1031km).

That's a lot of data. Damn. And we're heading towards being able to store that much data within my lifetime.

[taurinejunkie]

Wouldn't USB or SD be more space-efficient than DVDs?
Of course, I may be wrong, and even if I'm right your point about an exabyte being huge still stands.

[r2cagle]

So what you're saying is that we're heading toward storage of data being the same size as ENIAC? Do we really need to keep all that?

[Aut]

Holy crap, I can't even wrap my mind around that one.

[Evil Queen]

....I WANT ONE.

[Midorikawa]

This is a neat calculation.

To add to the server rack bit: At work, we're building multi chassis eSAS backup servers. Each chassis is 4u - 1u is about the size of a pizza box, height wise, and a bit wider than that. Each chassis holds 36 drives, 24 on front, and the other 12 on back. Each multi chassis server is 6 4u chassis, so 216 drives in this configuration. We are filling these chassis with 2TB drives. That is 432TB of storage for EACH server. Shy of half a petabyte. For one exabyte, we'd need over 2,000 of these backup servers. This is the chassis we use: http://www.supermicro.com/products/c...847A-R1400.cfm

We get cases of 2TB drives straight from the manufacturer. At last count, there were about 20 cases of drives. Each case holds 20 2TB drives, so 40TB per case, so 800TB in the stack we have in the NOC at the moment. It's neat to get to handle this much storage. :-D

[Bandit]

So, in basic terms, it would hold about the whole world's supply of on-line pr0n.



B

[Exaspera]

And to think, my first top-o-the-line computer in 1997 had 4WHOLE GIGS AND 1/2 GIG OF RAM!!! I had a slue of space!!!

[Midorikawa]

And to think, my first top-o-the-line computer in 1997 had 4WHOLE GIGS AND 1/2 GIG OF RAM!!! I had a slue of space!!!

my first machine was an Apple 2E with 16K of RAM, 1MHz 6502 CPU, no hard drive, and a single 1.2M 5.25" floppy drive. This machine is a 2 X dual core 2.66GHz Intel Xeon, with 1TB of space, and 4GB of RAM. It's aging gracefully at 4 years old. :-)

[Chromatix]

I've got one machine with a 2-terabyte RAID-5 array. It's made out of five identical 500GB disks - remembering that with RAID-5, one disk worth of space is used for coping with a future disk failure. I got four of the disks cheap - *very* cheap - from the "refurbished" pile.

I have another machine with 4GB RAM and 1GB VRAM. It presently only has 32GB of disk, but that's because I'm playing with an SSD. Normally it has about half a terabyte across two independent disks.

[Andara Bledin]

Heh. My first "machine" was a dumb terminal with a modem attached that was marginally more powerful and ran at a swift 2400 baud.

The current has 4GB of RAM and a 600GB drive. The 1TB drive is for external storage.

^-.-^

[lordlundar]

And that's only assuming the "marketing" format of an exabyte which is done in base 10, as opposed to the technical format which is a base 2. It has a tendency of being very different numbers the higher up you go.

[SG15Z]

Hm, and exabyte hard drive? Cool I'll take 5!

lol, My spell check doesn't recognize "exabyte".

[dalesys]

The first hard drive I worked with had a capacity of 173,328 bits. Built by Singer for the Minuteman missiles. 8" platter, 2-3 PC boards on top of the platter and a doubled-fist sized motor under it.

We used it to store 6-bit brightness values for stage lighting 80-200 channels, 200 cues. (circa 1970-1977)

[protege]

First computer I had (and still do) was a TI 99-4/A. No hard drive, 16 bits of memory...just enough to play Attack or TI Invaders