Terabyte

A terabyte (derived from the prefix tera- and commonly abbreviated TB) is a measurement term for data storage capacity. The value of a terabyte is based upon a decimal radix (base 10) and is defined as one trillion (short scale) bytes, or 1000 gigabytes.

The number of bytes in a terabyte is sometimes stated to be approximately 1.099 x 1012. This difference arises from a conflict between the long standing tradition of using binary prefixes and base 2 in the computer world, and the more popularly and intuitive decimal (SI) standard adopted widely in the industry. Standards organizations such as IEC, IEEE and ISO recommend to use the alternative term tebibyte (TiB) to signify the traditional measure of 10244 bytes, or 1024 gibibytes, leading to the following definitions:

Personal computers and related devices such as TiVos containing a terabyte or more of storage space have recently become practical using combinations of high-capacity mass-market hard drives: