Tebibyte

A tebibyte (TiB) is a unit of data storage equal to 2⁴⁰ bytes, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. Like kibibyte (KiB) and mebibyte (MiB), tebibyte has a binary prefix to remove any ambiguity when compared to the multiple possible definitions of a terabyte.

A tebibyte is slightly larger than a terabyte (TB), which is 10¹² bytes (1,000,000,000,000 bytes); a tebibyte is roughly 1.0995 terabytes. A tebibyte is 1,024 gibibytes. 1,024 tebibytes make up a pebibyte.

Due to historical naming conventions in the computer industry, which used decimal (base 10) prefixes for binary (base 2) measurements, the common definition of a terabyte could mean different numbers. When computer engineers first began using the term kilobyte to refer to a binary measurement of 2¹⁰ bytes (1,024 bytes), the difference between binary and decimal measurements was roughly 2%. As file sizes and storage capacities expanded, so did the difference between the two types of measurements — a tebibyte is almost 10% larger than a terabyte. Using tebibyte to refer specifically to binary measurements helps to address the confusion.

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