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I am trying to convert 2.5 quintillion bytes to terabytes (IBM's estimate on the amount of data produced daily), could someone check if my calculations are correct? 

1 Terabyte is 1000 Gigabytes 
1 Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes
1 Megabyte is 1000 Kilobytes
1 Kilobyte is 1000 Bytes

1 Quintillion is $10^{18} $

2.5 Quintillion is $2.5 x 10^{18} $

1 Terabyte is $10^{12}$ bytes

How many terabytes is it then? How do you work this out? Is this correct?

$2.5x10^{18} $ / $10^{12} $ = 2,500,000 Terabytes?

This sounds like an awful lot to me? Does this sound/look correct?

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Your calculation is correct. There are two different usages of kilo/mega/gigabytes, one with factors of $1000$ and one with factors of $2^{10}=1024$. Since you're dealing with a rather rough estimate, the difference is probably not important.

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    $\begingroup$ thanks for checking my answer. I thought the value was too big so I thought I made an error somewhere.... damn, that's a lot of data! I will accept when possible :). $\endgroup$
    – benscabbia
    Mar 17, 2016 at 11:12
  • $\begingroup$ It should be noted that sometimes one tries to distinguish the $1024$ conversion from the $1000$ conversion using "kibibytes", "gibibytes", etc. Not that I approve of the chosen terms for the units... :) $\endgroup$
    – J. M. ain't a mathematician
    Mar 17, 2016 at 11:23

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