Zebibyte

The zebibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. It is a member of the set of units with binary prefixes defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its unit symbol is ZiB.

The prefix zebi (symbol Zi) represents multiplication by 1024⁷, therefore:

1 zebibyte = 2⁷⁰ bytes = 1180591620717411303424bytes = 1024 exbibytes

The prefix zebi was added to the system of binary prefixes in August 2005.[1]

One zebibyte (1 ZiB) is equal to eight zebibits (8 Zibit).

One thousand twenty-four zebibytes (1024 ZiB) is equal to one yobibyte (1 YiB).

Usage examples

• GUID Partition Table (GPT) allows for a maximum disk and partition size of 8 zebibytes, or 9.4 zettabytes, when using 512-byte sectors.[2][3]
• The ZFS filesystem has a theoretical volume size limit of about 256 quadrillion zebibytes.[4]

In 2019, commercial internal hard drives for the consumer PC market were available up to 16 TB (as single drives, multiple drive arrays with higher total capacity are also available, generally as external devices). The available information storage of 1 ZiB is therefore equivalent to approximately 74 million of the largest hard drives available on consumer PCs.

See also

• IEC 80000-13
• IEEE 1541
• Orders of magnitude (data)
• SI prefix

References

1. News & views from the IEC June 2012
2. "FAQ: Drive Partition Limits" (PDF). UEFI Forum. 2010-06-09. Retrieved 2013-05-29.
3. Roderick W. Smith (2012-07-03). "Make the most of large drives with GPT and Linux". IBM. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Disk pointers are 64 bits in size, meaning that GPT can handle disks of up to 512 x 264 bytes (8 zebibytes, or 8.6 billion TiB), assuming 512-byte sectors.
4. "Oracle Solaris ZFS Administration Guide". Oracle Corporation. Retrieved July 27, 2013.