10 Petabytes Visualized

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 petabytes is roughly double the entire archive of the internet.

We tried to visualize what 10 petabytes of storage looks like. Here are three takes on it:

#1: 10 Petabytes in Backblaze Storage Pods

10-petabytes-storage-pods

#2: 10 Petabytes in Pixels by Drive Size Used

10-petabytes-by-drive-size

#3: 10 Petabytes of Drives Stacked Vertically (My Favorite)

10-petabytes-by-drive-height

How would you visualize 10 petabytes of storage?

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About Gleb Budman

Gleb Budman is a co-founder and has served as our chief executive officer since 2007, guiding the business from its inception in a Palo Alto apartment to a company serving customers in more than 175 countries with over an exabyte of data under management. 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.