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

HDD prices, currently $14.30-$14.90 per terabyte, are targeted to reach $25-$30 by 2027-2028.

From Barron's ● Jun. 15, 2026

“A terabyte is, for most people, gigantic, yet a fragment of a human brain – just a miniscule, teeny-weeny little bit of human brain – is still thousands of terabytes.”

From Science Daily ● May 9, 2024

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

It has said on its website it intends to begin auctioning the 5.79 terabytes of data it was able to steal from Berlin in seven days' time, according to news agency Reuters.

From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026

The project produced terabytes of genetic data and relied on Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Computing resources to reconstruct evolutionary relationships stretching back hundreds of millions of years.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 14, 2026

Jonathan Chung said prosecutors still have nearly two terabytes of discovery to provide to the defense.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2026

Each of Majestic’s new servers is capable of scaling up to 128 terabytes of high-speed memory, enough to smoothly run models with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, the company says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026

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

From Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts by Library of Congress