terabyte

American  

[ter-uh-bahyt] / ˈtɛr əˌbaɪt /

noun

Computers.

• terabytes
  plural

1. 2 40 (1,099,511,627,776) bytes; 1024 gigabytes.

2. (loosely) 10 12 or one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) bytes; 1000 gigabytes. TB, TByte.

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terabyte British  

/ ˈtɛrəˌbaɪt /

noun

1. computing 10 ¹² or 2 ⁴⁰ bytes

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terabyte Scientific  

/ tĕr′ə-bīt′ /

1. A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 gigabytes (2 ⁴⁰ bytes).

2. One trillion bytes.

3. See Note at megabyte

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• terabytes
  plural

Etymology

Origin of terabyte

First recorded in 1980–85; tera- + byte

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

terabyte terabytes

The average AT&T fiber household now uses more than one terabyte of data each month, up fivefold from a decade ago, the companies said Tuesday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026

Affected hardware included the MacBook Pro with 1 terabyte of storage, which rose to $1,999 from $1,699 on its US store.

From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2026

Western Digital and Seagate currently price their hard drives at around $14.30 to $14.90 per terabyte.

From Barron's ● Jun. 15, 2026

Calculating this four-phonon scattering required a parallel computing strategy, essentially utilizing a computing cluster with one terabyte of memory.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 28, 2023

So, to support a terabyte, multiply by five, which gives $5 million per year for a supported terabyte of data.

From Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts by Library of Congress

Today Magyar’s Birds alone records 10 to 12 terabytes a day—the equivalent of nearly 20 years of recorded sound, or more than three million songs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

The telescope will be generating about 1.3 terabytes of data a day, "which means you basically can't download the data to anybody's laptop," he said.

From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026

This includes 2018’s “WDCH Dreams,” which mapped 45 terabytes of orchestral metadata onto the exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall,

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026

By the end of its planned five year primary mission, Roman is expected to collect an enormous archive containing roughly 20,000 terabytes of data.

From Science Daily ● May 19, 2026

For twenty years, something less than three terabytes would be required.

From Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts by Library of Congress