Global Data Storage: How Much & Where It Is [Infographic]

It seems like lately I’ve been reading information about the Internet that forces my brain to think in a different way than I normally would. It’s really inspiring when something can change our perspective and take us in a direction we hadn’t thought of before.

For example, I wrote the article Utopian Future: The Internet Connects Everything right after I read an article about how Cisco believes the Internet is evolving. The theory is that as more things in our lives are connected together online, human engagement online will be required less and less as time goes on. You can read more about that for yourself, but it’s fascinating stuff.

This infographic below by Mozy is another one of those brain twisters. Have you thought of data on the Internet as physical data before? Have you ever wondered how much data that would be if it were stored in books? Have you ever thought of it as actual matter that has to live in a particular place? I’ve always thought of information on a computer in terms of how much space is needed on a drive to save it or transport it, but what about all the information online from a global perspective? If all that data were in the form of books, those books would cover the surface of the United States and China 13 times.

As it turns out, there are about 600 exabytes of data stored in the world now. An exabyte, in case you are wondering, is approximately one quintillion bytes or a billion gigabytes. An exabyte of storage could contain 50,000 years worth of DVD-quality video. I was a little surprised when I looked at this that 8 out of the 10 largest data centers are in the States. Wow, only one word is coming to my mind right now, and that is massive.