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"Digital Universe" Enters the Zettabyte Era
miller60 writes "In 2010 the volume of digital information created and duplicated in a year will reach 1.2 zettabytes, according to new data from IDC and EMC. The annual Digital Universe report is an effort to visualize the enormous amount of data being generated by our increasingly digital lives. The report's big numbers — a zettabyte is roughly a million petabytes — pose interesting questions about how the IT community will store and manage this firehose of data. Perhaps the biggest challenge isn't how much data we're creating — it's all the copies of it. Seventy-five percent of all the data in the Digital Universe is a copy, according to IDC. See additional analysis from TG Daily, The Guardian, and Search Storage."
1.21 zettabytes? Great Scott!
- 1 zettabyte / 1.44MB floppy disk = approx 694,444,444,444,444 floppy disks.
- 694,444,444,444,444 * 3.5 inches per disk = 2,430,555,555,555,550 inches if you laid the floppies end to end.
- 2,430,555,555,555,550 inches / 63360 inches per mile = 38,361,040,965 miles
- 38,361,040,965 miles / 2.7 billion miles to pluto = approx 7 round trips to Pluto via floppy disk.
In conclusion: Don't kill NASA yet, President Obama. We've found a way to get to Pluto!.