What Do 12 Terabytes-Worth of Data Look Like?

In the ongoing $1 billion legal lawsuit between YouTube and Viacom, a federal judge has recently ordered Google to turn over records of all users and videos ever viewed on YouTube. Privacy concern aside, that’s 12 terabytes of data.

Well, it sounds enormous … but what exactly does 12 terabytes-worth of information look like? To help you visualize the magnitude of that volume of data, we’ve compiled this handy dandy chart:

12 terabytes of data are roughly equivalent to:

- 5,280,000,000 single-spaced typewritten pages
- 1, 006,633 phone books
- 19,358 regular compact discs
- 2,614.5 DVDs
- 61.4 average-sized hard disks (200 GB)
- 9.6 human brains (the capacity of a human being’s functional memory is estimated to be 1.25 terabytes by futurist Raymond Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near)
- all the data from Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope

I don’t know the details of the legal order, but it seems that if information is information, then Google should just hand over the data in 5 billion sheets of single-spaced typewritten page. Comic sans font. IN CAPS!!1!

__________

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July 8, 2008 at 2:49 am by Alex
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64 comments to "What Do 12 Terabytes-Worth of Data Look Like?"

Peeves
July 8th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Google would gain back a lot of respect if they did just that. Also, Viacom has said that they are open to getting the information that wouldn’t require the exposure of usernames/emails but take that with a grain of salt. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly get a lot of spam from Viacom-owned companies based on your user preferences!
Therin Carlsson
July 8th, 2008 at 4:02 am
When they hand it to them in 5,280,000,000 single-spaced typewritten pages it should be encrypted with code from a captain crunch cereal box super secret decoder, “here ya go smarties, you figure it out”
X-Shark
July 8th, 2008 at 4:10 am
I’m thinking that they should at least use 1.5 spacing. . . maybe even double spaced 12.5px font. That would at least make it 7 billion pages. . . I would love to see Viacom use that in their lawsuit. You honor, I would like to submit 12 billion pages as exhibit A.
German Romance
July 8th, 2008 at 4:26 am
This is realy a good comparison of how much information you can store in different media devices. With information growing year by year, we need better ways to store all the data.
dirtymouse
July 8th, 2008 at 4:29 am
12 terrabytes is not very much, i mean, that’s like 12x 1TB hard drives. I manage that amount of data at my day job, and have a quarter of that much data at home.

i thought we’d be looking more at 12x petabytes of data for You Tube.
In which case viacom will need to re-consider it’s request more realistically.
davedonelson
July 8th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Google could turn over the data in 5 billion pages, then pay off the $1 billion damage claim in 100 billion loose, unwrapped pennies…which would be how many dump truck loads?.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds
Zecc
July 8th, 2008 at 4:52 am
How much is that in trees?
Dani
July 8th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Now they’ll know that I look at Lost shipper music videos, 30 Rock scene mash ups, and slam poetry. HI VIACOM.
BikerRay
July 8th, 2008 at 5:12 am
I’d be interested to know how much data there is in the servers for You Tube or Google Earth. More than a couple of floppies worth, I’d imagine.
semi
July 8th, 2008 at 6:47 am
It should read “What *does” twelve terabytes of data look like?” not “What *do* twelve terabytes of data look like?” Grammar counts, especially for headlines.
LH
July 8th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Good question Zecc.
ted
July 8th, 2008 at 7:08 am
I’d like to see them turn in 9.6 human brains.
LV
July 8th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Now this is only a rough estimate, but about 39111 trees would be used for 5 billion pages.
1 4×4x8 foot stack of wood will give you about 90000 sheets of paper.
idiots
July 8th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Except the court ruling stated that the info be turned over on 4Gig Hard Drives.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of your fun!
SoLinkable
July 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Those were all neat except for the “human brain capacity”. Thats one hell of an estimate… I mean, I’m not sure how you can really estimate that. This still gives an excellent representation and comparison of that massive amount of data.
luvpumpkns
July 8th, 2008 at 9:26 am
i still think viacom needs to be slapped with a class action lawsuit. they’re supposed to notify every single user whose data they’re looking at, according to the original law the judge tweaked to allow youtube to fall under rules for places like blockbuster.
Gerry
July 8th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Back in my admin days when I used to purchase 9Gb drives for $2500, 12terrabytes would be a formidable thought (1,300 of the 9giggers at $3million).

But these days when you can go out to any computermart and buy a dozen terrabyte drives for less than $3k and put them all on one tabletop connected to one PC, it’s really not that bad.

Scary to think that having that much space is so affordable and downright practical for a single user….
Alex
July 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Data is plural, datum is singular. Right?

“What do the data look like?” Not “what does the data look like?” Someone better at grammar please help here …
geoff
July 8th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I’d go with the cd’s option. silly viacom.
kid_icarus
July 8th, 2008 at 11:12 am
lol on paying damages with pennies!!!! that is hilarious!
MrsBug
July 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
My math might be wrong, but I think that works out to 105,600 boxes of paper (10 reams per box, 5000 sheets per box).

That’s a lot of paper.
Christophe
July 8th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
“I’d like to see them turn in 9.6 human brains”

I really LOLed on this one
gabriel
July 8th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Power to the People. Damn Viacom!
Here’s the Top 10 List - The People’s Response TO Viacoms Lawsuit Against YouTube Inc.

http://www.techxiety.com/techxiety/2008/07/techxietys-top-ten-list—the -peoples-response-to-viacoms-lawsuit-against-youtube-inc.html
RyanL
July 8th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
That’s a decent representation, but how many Libraries of Congress will 12TB hold?
Mat
July 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Zecc,

We grow trees, they are renewable.
violet
July 8th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Re grammar: “of data” is not at issue. The determining phrase is “12 terabytes-worth.”

If the terabytes were considered plural rather than a mass of information, the plural construction would be fine. But it’s actually “terabytes-worth,” which is a singular concept. It’s the worth that is the problem. If you dropped it, you could argue either way, I think.
Jeff Kee
July 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
How long would it be in voice recording? “Row two hundred and thirty eight thousand nine hundred forty two, video id tag nine Y X Z four D U Z 2 C K viewed by userid two thousand foorteen….”
Josh
July 8th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
‘Data’ is plural. It should read “What *do* twelve terabytes of data look like?” not “What *does* twelve terabytes of data look like?” Grammar counts, especially for grammar nazis.
unex
July 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
WTF? All Youtube videos and data ONLY 12 TB ? that’s very little in my opinion.
pyroape
July 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I second the paper thing, only “accidentally” have a breeze blow it around and leave them unnumbered. Hell, better yet, put it as a torrent in .daa format and only see to 98.9%. I’d gladly help seed a 1 terabyte chunk… at least some of it.
business
July 8th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
That’s cool. I have more knowledge than a 200gb harddisk
Anon
July 8th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
“WTF? All Youtube videos and data ONLY 12 TB ? that’s very little in my opinion.”

Wouldn’t it just be just “Video Id”, “User Id”, “User IP”. Not the actual video data.
kc
July 8th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
@unex
The 12TB is just the server log, not all the videos
Johnny
July 8th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Meh, they should hand it all over on human brains! bwa hahaha
ECA
July 8th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Peeves…
forget that…
FAX it to them..Use up THEIR paper..and shipping cost.
asdf
July 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
what kind of an asshole titles his article “what do 12 terabytes-worth of data look like?” and then makes a graph that has no relevance or scale?

oh, you did.
Satanic Dwarf
July 8th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I support Zecc. What a waste of trees that would be. Mat, I know trees are renewable, but it takes 20 years to have a decent size tree…and besides : common, cutting tree just for a stupid lawsuit…

They are talking about digital data, give them some hard drives rather than trees…And we all know that this much paper will either get mixed up, lost, or thrown away over the years. So what’s the point. Hashes can proove no alterations were made to the data, so I stick to 12×1TB hard drives.

BTW, business comment was pretty funny
Davey McDave
July 8th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Why is this even a graph? What is the point of the vertical axis?
Jethro
July 8th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
To make that much paper it would take 7,111,040 cubic feet of wood. Environmentalists would have a freak out about that.
Dougem
July 8th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Now consider what the serverlog consists of, essentially just text.

9.6 human brains worth of text! that is a TON of data
Jethro
July 8th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
How long would it take to fax 12 TB of data, now that’s a good question.
Tackeyon
July 8th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
12 TB faxed on a 2400 baud modem, lol
J P
July 8th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
It still means nothing to me. Anything over 3 digits makes me dizzy.
DOJ
July 8th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
does anyone know why the judge thinks viacom needs at that information?
Kush
July 8th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
the brain was recently estimated at 10 terabytes of data
Yasser
July 8th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I’ve never thought about it this way lol
Wow
July 8th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I would have guessed it to be a lot more than 12TB. At least a hundred.

I guess it keeps the file size down when you make them all over-compressed and crappy looking. Keeps the bandwidth costs down too.
Planet Malaysia
July 8th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
LOL! You’re damm funny.
Baggins
July 8th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
@Wow:

It’s not all the videos, just the server logs. (Who watched what when?)
Petes2cents
July 8th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I know it’s a lot of information, but when I first looked at 12 terabytes, it just didn’t sound like much, until I saw the illustration of 1 million phone books, then it sunk in a little.

Sorry, brain fart.
Jamesy
July 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hey now people, let’s save some trees. I suggest a single PDF document (with background pictures on every page)
SDPCH
July 8th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
12 terabytes isnt that much logically, physically that is a lot of media, then what happens to the info?

http://www.sandiegopchelp.com
subcorpus
July 8th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
you can estimate the power of the brain … ???
i thought we needed a few more years to do that …
guess i was wrong …
Shrenik
July 8th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
woww I feel..people here are spending so much of time in calculating and analysing the media and papers and trees…even google/youtube would not take that much of time in accumulating and sending (or may be printing or faxing or watever) the data to viacom!!!
mark mark
July 8th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Google should just give it in on floppy disks.
Axis of Evil
July 9th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Why draw an axis, if its not to scale? mmmmkkk? wtf is that

otherwise, interesting chart…
who and when
July 9th, 2008 at 6:30 am
what´s the purpose of analyzing who, where and what ? only thing that comes to my mind is commercial purposes. i sure hope that the .log is made public.. it´s good to know what your neighbour´s r up to :] after ten years of investigating u´ll know she/he likes AC/DC too.
Lea
July 9th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Alex, your cruelty is too good.

Comic sans and in caps.
*shudder*
Jany
July 10th, 2008 at 2:45 am
um… why does everyone assume that 9.6 brains is accurate? How did they even find that out? It’s not like you can click “save” and brain will say “sorry memory full.” Am I missing something?
Jany
July 10th, 2008 at 2:47 am
… nevermind…
zarbie
July 10th, 2008 at 7:30 am
And the Viacom lawyers are going to look at 12 Terabytes of youtube videos at Viacom’s expense…
fun job!
Pete S.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Even better: save a tree, and just dictate the information over the phone to a viacom employee.
AvangionQ
July 13th, 2008 at 7:31 am
The trouble with more data is that more data isn’t a problem, so long as you have the capacity to absorb it … the `trouble` with more data is that data is searchable, can be sorted and its relatively easy to find what you’re looking for *if* you know what you’re looking for and such data exists in your searchable database …
Josh N
August 12th, 2008 at 5:30 am
How can people tell if 12 tb is 9.6 brains?? I dont think thats very accurate, because as we research more and more about the brain we realise that your memeory capacity keeps on getting bigger, first they thought it was 1tb, then 10tb now people say depending on how much information each brain cell holds, around
100 million megabytes (100tb) Now theyre saying 100-tb to unlimited capacity… The brain is complicated.

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