Who needs an exabyte?

[westmich]

I recently learned that there are -
1024 bytes in a kilobyte
1024 kilobytes in a megabyte
1024 megabytes in a gigabyte
1024 gigabytes in a terabyte
1024 terabytes in a petabyte
1024 petabytes in an exabyte

I can't even get my mind around how big that really is let alone who or what would need that amount of memory.

[Elledan]

Who remembers that quote of Bill Gates about that 640 kb of memory would be sufficient for everyone?

Don't worry, at the beginning of the 22nd century we'll be using exabytes

[aspen]

How about the president of IBM who when asked what he thought the world market for computers is, responded by saying "I think there is room for about 4"

[Karl]

I know TeraBytes of space are being used by a great many corporations - ask Wayne, they have a 2Tb (I think) array.

Many banks use large Tb arrays as well.

[qslack]

In response to your question, I think that no one will ever need more than 640tb.

Also, with bigger drives come bigger packet size (right now it's usually around 1024b) so even the smallest files will take up 1GB.

[westmich]

Originally posted by qslack
In response to your question, I think that no one will ever need more than 640tb.

Also, with bigger drives come bigger packet size (right now it's usually around 1024b) so even the smallest files will take up 1GB.

I got the information from a study manual for taking the MCP test on Windows 2000 Pro. The new NTFS5 file system can support up to 16 exabyte volumes. I believe it clusters at 32k.

[qslack]

Originally posted by westmich


I got the information from a study manual for taking the MCP test on Windows 2000 Pro. The new NTFS5 file system can support up to 16 exabyte volumes. I believe it clusters at 32k.

Something about Windows 2000 addressing 16EB (ExaByte) volumes makes me laugh. Or was it just that NTFS can hold that much? Isn't the limit on 32-bit machines 15PB?

By the way, 15PB can hold every single thing that happened in the past 40,000 years (i.e. as a high-res 3d model down) with space to spare according to the BeOS Bible.

Also, with the new UK Internet+phone monitoring bill that I think was passed, they'll create about 25 TB per day.

[PeterW]

I dont think I will fill that much
In my computers I have had..
8086 : 20mb - never filled
286 : 80mb - got pretty close
386 : 120mb - not filled
486 : 540mb - no where near filled
pentium 90 : 810mb - nah, no where near.. I used about 600mb I think..
pentium 100 laptop : 1gig - yay.. installed win98, office 2k with loads of clipart and filled it..
current PC : 10.2gb + 5gb - used about 13gb; only about 100 x my original hdd spare

Also, perhaps as fas improve, the min size will improve?
e.g. Fat16 was 32kb, Fat32 is 4kb.

I know in ntfs etc, as hard disk size increases, cluster size increases.. but perhaps in the future this will become more neglible?

hmm.. perhaps I haven't explained what I was trying to say properly.. oh well

[Mike Ossendrijver]

I think NASA has several computers with several EBs of data and calculations and stuff - actually, I think scientific projects will be one of the few interested parties for EB data storage - indeed, big companies have TB storage needs but yeez, an EB is *much* more!

Let's try making a JPEG of of one Exabyte ... and hold a contest who has it loaded the first

Just my $1.56
<Edited by CMPTR.com on 01-04-2001 at 04:16 PM>

[Owen]

http://www.terraserver.com

Browse a terabyte database of images compliments of Microsoft. I found a picture of my house from space.

Owen

[Aidan Bahta]

Originally posted by Owen
http://www.terraserver.com

Browse a terabyte database of images compliments of Microsoft. I found a picture of my house from space.

Owen

I love that site! I remember about half a year ago, I found the area where my house is, only thing is it hadn't been built. It was all desert in that area.

Is there even an exabyte of data in any one building?

[Hierophant]

I am almost sure that the Federal Government has several Exabytes worth of Data.

The IRS is required to keep Tax Returns for 7 years for each filer in the country.

The DOD tracks the GPS position of every U.S. Military unit in the world. At over 1 million units, that is a lot of data at the minimum of 24 bytes each and probably more if there is status info. Now each batch is 24 million bytes (minimum) and if they keep that for 30 days and update every 5 minutes, that is 207,360,000,000 (207+ gigabytes) which doesn't even include service records, vehicle maintanence records and information on strategic targets.

I read in Fast Company magazine a few months ago about a new U.S. Attack Submarine which is completely computer driven, the first of its kind. The bridge of the ship is reminiscent of something out of Star Trek complete with a Heads Up Display utilizing Holograpic Imaging. Advanced Radar and Sonar systems will allow the crew to see the fish swimming around them on this display. They will also be able to pick an accessible point on the globe, click on it and away the ship goes. Things like this take a lot of power.

For the common everyday user, this amount of space most likely will not be needed for a long time if ever.

[Sparkie]

I remember people being in awe at gigabytes about five years ago..who would ever need a gigabyte worth of space on their computer? Its simply unimaginable!

[westmich]

Speaking of the Federal government, something else came to mind. I remember seeing a special on the Discovery channel about the CIA. The CIA has seven huge computers in the bowels of their new building. I can't remember what little technical details they gave, but they are probably some of the largest databases in existance.

[Owen]

Well, if 220 million people file a return (random guess) and it is kept for 7 years and each is 10k (on average) then that makes a total of 154,000,000,000,000 bytes or roughly 154 terabytes.

Lots of data there. And I bet they just scanned in the old returns so each may be a lot bigger.

Owen