Answer: Enough Data To Make Your Freaking Brain Explode!

Question: How much data storage exists on the planet?

According to this article in eMarketer, a study by IDC reveals that there are 246 exabytes of total storage on the planet.

An exabyte equals 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes, and there are 246 of those, which I'm sure is really meaningful to you. So how about this: if the average iPod is 40 gigs, then from that much storage you could create over 6.6 billion iPods, more than one for every person on the planet. Yeah, I know, you probably got three of them -- that'll cover for the guy in Vanuatu and the teenager on the Faroe Islands that don't have one.

And because I knew you were gonna ask -- an exabyte is 1,000 petabytes, a petabyte a 1,000 terabytes, and a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes -- so that means an exabyte equals a jillion zillion gigabytes.

But that's not the best part. The best part is that the story goes on to say that more data is going to be generated just this year -- 255 exabytes -- than there even is storage available. If that doesn't make your head explode thinking about it, then you have a hell of a head.

So the next time your no account CTO tells you "storage is expensive" as an excuse to not keep log files for your site -- yes, that's what one actually told me less than a year ago, in front of the CEO -- that's when you know it's time to quit.