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petabyte

American  
[pet-uh-bahyt] / ˈpɛt əˌbaɪt /

noun

  1. 2 50 bytes, or 1,024 terabytes.

  2. (loosely) 10 15 or a million billion bytes. PB


petabyte British  
/ ˈpɛtəˌbaɪt /

noun

  1. computing 10 15 or 2 50 bytes

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

petabyte Scientific  
/ pĕtə-bīt /
  1. A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 terabytes (2 50 bytes).

  2. One quadrillion bytes.

  3. See Note at megabyte


Etymology

Origin of petabyte

peta- + byte

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Together, these archives now hold about 100 petabytes of information -- roughly equivalent to the total amount of text found across the entire internet, with a single petabyte equaling one million gigabytes.

From Science Daily • Oct. 28, 2025

Every time one tiny subatomic particle smashes into another during experiments at the LHC, the impact generates staggering volumes of data – about one petabyte per second.

From BBC • Jul. 1, 2024

Cheng says the hardest part was finding computational resources large enough to handle the petabyte of data.

From Science Magazine • Jun. 16, 2024

In one recent test of six SSDs, half of them wrote a petabyte of data before wearing out.

From Seattle Times • Jun. 25, 2022

One petabyte is equivalent to one million gigabytes.

From New York Times • Mar. 2, 2010