TiBs

TiB, or tebibyte, is a binary unit of information storage defined by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It denotes 2^40 bytes, equal to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes, and is also equal to 1,024 GiB. The prefix tebi- and the symbol TiB are part of the IEC binary prefixes; TiBs (plural) are used when referring to multiple tebibytes.

TiB is distinct from the terabyte (TB), which in the decimal system represents 10^12 bytes. In binary terms, 1 TiB is about 1.099 TB. The relationship between these systems can be summarized as: 1 TiB = 1,024 GiB; 1 GiB = 1,024 MiB; 1 MiB = 1,024 KiB; 1 KiB = 1,024 bytes.

Usage of TiB is common in describing storage capacity on disks, solid-state drives, and memory, where binary counts align with computer addressing. Some devices and software report capacities in TB for marketing or decimal-centric contexts, while others report TiB or GiB for precision. When comparing specifications, it is important to distinguish between decimal TB and binary TiB.

History and standardization: The IEC introduced binary prefixes such as kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, and tebi- in 1999 to reduce confusion. Adoption has varied, and many vendors historically used TB or GB in binary form without adopting the new prefixes, leading to confusion between TB and TiB. Today, many operating systems and file systems support both representations, labeling binary capacities with TiB (and related prefixes) and decimal capacities with TB.