How Much Storage Does YouTube Have?
YouTube is a massive video-sharing website that was created in 2005. Over the last seventeen years, it has grown exponentially, becoming one of the most popular websites in the world. And with good reason – YouTube offers a wealth of content, from user-generated videos to professional productions.
But just how much storage does YouTube have? The answer is almost unlimited.
YouTube uses Google Cloud Storage, which gives them access to an almost unlimited amount of storage space. In fact, Google has said that they can store “petabytes upon petabytes” of data on their servers.
How Much Storage Does YouTube Have?
According to some recent calculations, YouTube has over 2500 Petabytes of storage which is growing every day.
To put that into perspective, a petabyte is equal to one million gigabytes. That’s the equivalent of over 2500,000,000 Gigabytes.
So if each video on YouTube was one gigabyte in size, YouTube could still store over one million videos. And as we all know, there are far more than one million videos on YouTube.
2500 Petabytes is a lot of data, but it’s not infinite. As YouTube continues to grow, so do its storage needs.
Fun fact: YouTube uses around 10% of all the internet’s available bandwidth.
To keep up with demand, YouTube has invested heavily in cutting-edge storage solutions. In 2010, YouTube announced that it was using a then-new type of storage called “solid state drives” (SSDs).
SSDs are significantly faster than traditional hard drives, and they use less energy, which is important for a data center that stores as much data as YouTube does.
YouTube also uses a technology called “RAIN” to distribute its data across multiple storage devices. RAIN is an acronym for “Redundant Array of Independent Nodes,” and it helps to keep YouTube’s data safe and secure by spreading it out across multiple physical locations.
YouTube isn’t the only company that has to deal with massive amounts of data. Google, which owns YouTube, has even more data to store. In fact, Google processes over 24 Petabytes of data every single day.
How Does YouTube Store All That Data?
To accommodate the hundreds of millions of videos that people watch on YouTube every day, Google has to store a lot of data.
If you took all the digital data generated by humans in 2010 and stored it on Blu-ray discs, it would take up about 5 petabytes of space. So YouTube's storage needs are significant, but they're not unmanageable.
There are two main ways that YouTube stores all that data. The first is on physical servers, which are located in data centers around the world. Google doesn't say how many servers it has, but according to one estimate, the company has over 1 million servers in its data centers.
The second way that YouTube stores data is in the cloud. Cloud storage is a way of storing data on remote servers, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Google has a large cloud storage infrastructure, which it uses for YouTube and other services.
To make sure that videos are streamed quickly and smoothly, YouTube uses a content distribution network (CDN). A CDN is a system of servers that delivers content to users based on their location.
YouTube has servers all over the world, so when you watch a video, it's likely that the data is coming from a server that's close to you. This reduces latency and makes for a better user experience.
YouTube is just one of many services that use Google's data centers and cloud storage infrastructure. Other notable examples include Gmail, Google Search, and Google Maps.
How Much Storage Does YouTube Require Each Year?
To keep up with its ever-growing storage needs, YouTube requires around 200 Petabytes of new storage space each year. That’s the equivalent of adding two million gigabytes of storage every day.
Even if you upload one hour of video to YouTube every single day, it would take you over 800 years to fill up 200 Petabytes of storage.
Of course, YouTube is adding new videos at a much faster rate than that. In fact, over 400 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute! At that rate, YouTube will need even more storage in the years to come.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible for YouTube to run out of storage space?
It's unlikely that YouTube will ever run out of storage space. As the service continues to grow, Google will invest in more data centers and storage infrastructure.
How much does it cost to store all that data?
Google doesn't say how much it costs to store YouTube's data, but it's likely that the company spends billions of dollars on data storage each year.
Is it true that YouTube deletes old videos?
No, YouTube does not delete old videos. Once a video is uploaded, it will remain on the site forever unless the user who uploaded it decides to delete it.
What would happen if YouTube suddenly stopped working?
If YouTube stopped working, it would have a major impact on the internet. According to one estimate, YouTube accounts for over 10% of all internet traffic.
So if YouTube went down, it would cause a significant slowdown in internet speeds around the world.
Is YouTube Profitable?
Yes, YouTube is profitable. The company generates revenue through advertising and partnerships with content creators. YouTube also offers a paid subscription service called YouTube Premium, which gives users access to exclusive content and ad-free streaming.
In 2020, YouTube is expected to generate around $15 billion in advertising revenue. This would make it one of the most profitable divisions of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
Final Words
YouTube isn’t just a website where you can watch videos. It’s also a massive storage platform that helps to keep the internet running. The next time you watch a video on YouTube, remember that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than you might think.
So there you have it – YouTube has “unlimited” storage space. And given that they are owned by Google, it's likely that they will continue to have access to even more storage in the future.
