What Is Tebibyte (TiB)? - Definition From - TechTarget

What tebibytes are used for

In the computer industry's early years, it wasn't a problem to use the same system of prefixes to refer to both the power-of-10 and the power-of-two multipliers. Data storage capacities then were much smaller than what they are today. At the low end of the multiplier scale, the difference in the absolute values of the numbers the two systems generated was relatively small.

For example, there are 1,000 bytes in a kilobyte (KB) of data using the power-of-10 system. Using the power-of-two definition, a kilobyte of data equals 1,024 bytes. That 24-byte difference was often considered negligible. However, as the scale of computing and data storage capacity has grown, the absolute difference between measurements using the two systems has been magnified.

A terabyte of data using the decimal, power-of-10 system equals 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, while a terabyte of data using the binary, power-of-two system would equal 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. The nearly 100 billion-byte difference began to cause problems and could not be ignored.

By the latter half of the 1990s, using the same prefixes for two different units of measure had become confusing. A common problem happened because disk drive manufacturers used the decimal system when labeling the capacity of HDDs and SSDs. But operating system (OS) vendors preferred to use the binary power-of-two system to measure computer memory and data storage capacity. When a customer bought a new HDD that the manufacturer labeled as having 1 TB of capacity, the computer OS would report that it had only 931.32 gigabytes (GB) of capacity.

The IEC standard for the binary system of measurement was developed to eliminate this confusion. If, in the example above, the OS had used the binary system of prefixes instead of the decimal system, it would have reported 931.32 gibibytes (GiB) instead of 931.32 GB of capacity. The consumer would also be alerted that the OS vendor was using a different system of measurement than the HDD manufacturer.

The creation of the binary prefix system didn't solve the capacity measurement problem, however. In practice, those prefixes are mostly used in academic circles, technical writing and open system environments. Commercial vendors and IT professionals tend to not use the binary prefixes.