CALTRX

Terabytes to Gigabytes

Convert TB to GB. 1 TB = 1,000 GB. For drive capacity, cloud storage, and backup planning.

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Gigabytes

Tips & Notes

  • ✓1 TB SSD holds approximately 250,000 photos (4 MB each) or 200 hours of 1080p video.
  • ✓Enterprise drives reach 20 TB. Tape libraries reach petabytes (1 PB = 1,000 TB).
  • ✓NAS RAID planning: 4×4TB RAID 5 = ~12 TB usable. 2×4TB RAID 1 = ~4 TB usable.
  • ✓Cloud tiers: most cloud services top out at 2-5 TB per account for personal plans.

Common Mistakes

  • ✗Confusing TB (decimal, 1,000 GB) with TiB (binary, 1,024 GiB) — a 1 TB drive shows ~931 GiB in OS.
  • ✗Not accounting for RAID redundancy when sizing NAS — RAID takes 1-2 drives worth of space.
  • ✗Assuming SSD and HDD TB are equivalent in performance — SSDs are ~100× faster for random reads.
  • ✗Planning backup storage equal to primary — best practice is 3× primary for proper backup redundancy.

Terabytes to Gigabytes Overview

What This Calculator Does

Converts terabytes to gigabytes: 1 TB = 1,000 GB (decimal). Also shows TiB to GiB: 1 TiB = 1,024 GiB (binary).

NAS and Backup Planning

| TB | GB | Use Case | |----|-----|---------| | 1 | 1,000 | Basic home storage | | 2 | 2,000 | Photo and video library | | 4 | 4,000 | Video editing workstation | | 8 | 8,000 | Small media server | | 16 | 16,000 | Large NAS array |

Advertised vs Displayed Capacity

A 4 TB drive = 4,000,000,000,000 bytes. Windows shows ~3,637 GiB (labeled "GB" in older versions). macOS shows 4,000 GB. Same drive, different display. The 9.95% difference between TB (decimal) and TiB (binary) grows with drive size.

Cloud Storage Pricing

AWS S3: ~$0.023/GB/month. A 10 TB archive = 10,000 GB × $0.023 = $230/month. Azure Blob cool tier: ~$0.018/GB. Always convert TB to GB when calculating monthly cloud costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

1 TB = 1,000 GB (decimal, as labeled by manufacturers). Your OS may show ~931 GB because it uses binary GiB.

2 × 1,000 = 2,000 GB. A 2 TB drive is one of the most common laptop hard drive sizes.

Approximately: 250,000 photos (4 MB), 200,000 MP3s (5 MB), 200 hours of 1080p video (5 GB/hour), or 500 hours of standard definition video (2 GB/hour).

1 TB = 10^12 bytes. Windows displays storage in GiB (divides by 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 instead of 10^9): 10^12 ÷ 1,073,741,824 = 931.3 GiB, displayed as GB. The drive is full size — it is a unit display difference between manufacturers (decimal) and OS (binary).