{"id":304,"date":"2011-01-05T15:59:51","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T23:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=304"},"modified":"2025-12-11T11:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T19:24:12","slug":"10-petabytes-visualized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/10-petabytes-visualized\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Petabytes Visualized"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

As we approached the end of 2010, our VP of Engineering sent an email:<\/p>\n

Backblaze crossed the 10 petabyte<\/a> mark in data storage for our customers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I see us constantly adding storage for our online backup service<\/a>, it was one of those moments that made me think, “Wow, that’s a lot of storage.” 10 petabytes is roughly double the entire archive of the internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We tried to visualize what 10 petabytes of storage looks like. Here are three takes on it:<\/p>\n

#1: 10 Petabytes in Backblaze Storage Pods<\/h2>\n

\"10-petabytes-storage-pods\"<\/p>\n

#2: 10 Petabytes in Pixels by Drive Size Used<\/h2>\n

\"10-petabytes-by-drive-size\"<\/p>\n

#3: 10 Petabytes of Drives Stacked Vertically (My Favorite)<\/h2>\n

\"10-petabytes-by-drive-height\"<\/p>\n

How would you visualize 10 petabytes of storage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we approached the end of 2010, our VP of Engineering sent an email: Backblaze crossed the 10 petabyte mark in data storage for our customers. While I see us constantly adding storage for our online backup service, it was one of those moments that made me think, “Wow, that’s a lot of storage.” 10… Continue reading 10 Petabytes Visualized<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23],"tags":[468],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-storage","category-storage-pod","tag-b2cloud","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Does 10 Petabytes of Data Actually Look Like?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As we approached the end of 2010, our VP of Engineering sent an email: Backblaze crossed the 10 petabyte mark in data storage for our customers. While I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/10-petabytes-visualized\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Does 10 Petabytes of Data Actually Look Like?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we approached the end of 2010, our VP of Engineering sent an email: Backblaze crossed the 10 petabyte mark in data storage for our customers. While I\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/10-petabytes-visualized\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-05T23:59:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-11T19:24:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/blog-vault-datacenter-top.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"405\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Does 10 Petabytes of Data Actually Look Like?","description":"As we approached the end of 2010, our VP of Engineering sent an email: Backblaze crossed the 10 petabyte mark in data storage for our customers. 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Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies.","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/author\/gleb\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/blog-vault-datacenter-top.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}