Tebibyte

A tebibyte (abbreviated "TiB") is a data storage unit of measurement equal to 2⁴⁰ bytes, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. The "tebi" prefix is intended to remove ambiguity compared to multiple definitions of "terabyte," which have evolved over time.

A tebibyte is slightly larger than a terabyte (TB), which is 10¹² bytes (1,000,000,000,000 bytes). A terabyte is roughly 0.9 tebibytes, and one tebibyte is approximately 1.1 terabytes. 1,024 gibibytes equals one tebibyte, and 1,024 tebibytes make up a pebibyte.

Why Use Tebibytes?

Computer scientists first defined a kilobyte using the base 2 value of 2¹⁰ bytes (1,024 bytes). Today, a kilobyte is defined using the base 10 value of 1,000 bytes. A megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes, and a terabyte is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Conversely, a mebibyte is 1,048,576 bytes, a gibibyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, and a tebibyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.

While the difference between a kilobyte and a kibibyte is roughly 2%, a tebibyte is almost 10% larger than a terabyte. Therefore, it is essential to distinguish between the two units of measurement when describing large amounts of data.

NOTE: For a list of data storage units of measurement, view this Help Center article.