tebibyte

IPA/ˈtebibaɪt/
IPA/ˈtebibaɪt/

tebibyte — noun

  • tebibytesingular
  • tebibytesplural

1. a standard measurement for how much digital information a computer can store or

1.nounC2
Definition

a standard measurement for how much digital information a computer can store or process; one tebibyte equals two to the power of forty bytes — the same as 1,024 gibibytes, or around 1.1 trillion bytes

Example

The new server has four tebibytes of storage space for user files.

collocation: [number] + tebibytes + of + storage/data/memory

A video collection of one tebibyte can hold about two hundred hours of film.

concrete comparison: one tebibyte ≈ 200 hours of video

Common collocations
  • tebibyte of data
  • tebibyte of storage
  • tebibyte of memory
  • measure in tebibytes
Synonyms
  • TiB

    the standard abbreviation; more common in technical writing than the full word

Usage Note

Abbreviation: TiB. Unlike a terabyte (which is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes), a tebibyte always refers to 2^40 bytes. The term was created by the IEC in 1998 to end confusion between binary and decimal meanings of 'terabyte.'

Common Mistakes

My hard drive is 2 tebibytes, which is 2 trillion bytes.
My hard drive is 2 tebibytes, which is about 2.2 trillion bytes.
A tebibyte is 2^40 (1,099,511,627,776) bytes, not 10^12 bytes.
A tebibyte is the same as a terabyte.
A tebibyte is slightly larger than a terabyte
about 10% bigger.' — Tebibyte uses binary measurement (1024 based) while terabyte uses decimal (1000 based).

Word family

  • tebi-
    prefixC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Tebibyte (TiB) and terabyte (TB) are often confused but measure data differently. A tebibyte uses binary (base-2) measurement: 1 TiB = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. A terabyte uses decimal (base-10): 1 TB = 10^12 = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes — about 9% smaller. Gibibyte (GiB) and gigabyte (GB) follow the same pattern at a lower scale: 1 GiB = 2^30 bytes, while 1 GB = 10^9 bytes. In practice, hard-drive manufacturers label drives in decimal terabytes, but operating systems often report capacity in binary tebibytes. For example, a drive sold as '2 TB' may show '1.82 TiB' on a computer. Use TiB when precision in binary computing is needed, and TB when following the manufacturer's label.

tebibyte ↗terabyte ↗gibibytegigabyte

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • measured in tebibytes
  • per tebibyte

Prepositions

Etymology

English

The word 'tebibyte' was formed in 1998 by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as part of a new standard for binary prefixes. It combines 'tebi-', a blend of 'tera-' and 'binary', with 'byte.' The prefix 'tebi-' signals that the unit follows base-2 counting (2^40), unlike 'tera-' which follows base-10 (10^12). This naming system was created to end the confusion caused by using the same word 'terabyte' for two different values.