how big is a teraquad?

sportguy301 · Ensign, Junior Grade Joined: 19 Aug 2007 Posts: 30

the VOY cast is always talking about teraquads of data, does anyone know how big this is?

TrekkieMage · **Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:14 am**

According to Memory-Alpha it's a trillion quads - but all the info on a quad is that it's just a unit of storage. Much like byte today.

lionhead · **Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:26 am**

Quad is proably bigger then a Byte. Probably the Quantum version of a Byte

You hear the word "Terrabyte" more often then "Terraquad" though.

Captain Digness · Commander Joined: 04 Dec 2003 Posts: 418

10^12 or a trillion

Aryeh · **Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:53 pm**

If I am Not mistaken, it is 10^12*10^15=10^27 or
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. or a Trillion x Quadrillion

That actualy makes senes since even now we have Terabytes and Quadrabytes hard drives. So in the future they must have beter...

lionhead · **Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:46 am**

Aryeh · **Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:22 pm**

Because there is no other meaning to "Quad" except for "Quadrant", "Quadruplets" and "Quadrabytes".

lionhead · **Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:51 am**

So? a quad is a quad. If a quad is a quad then a terraquad is a trillion quads. They don't call it quadrabytes.

squiggy · **Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:05 am**

antipodean-opaleye · **Tue Nov 20, 2007 4:42 pm**

I've never actually thought about this before. But interesting question. I think I just thought of it as being really really big.

Kathryn_Janeway218 · **Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:32 pm**

Voyager's computer held a lot of storage space, and for Starling to only be able to download 20% of it and still get a lot of information means that the computer is massive.

lab99 · Crewman Joined: 15 Jul 2009 Posts: 2

Terra is a trillion, a 1 with 12 zeros (1,000,000,000,000) a teraquad is 1 trillion to the 4th, to the 4th to the 4th, to the 4th or a 1 with 3072 zeros...

lab99 · Crewman Joined: 15 Jul 2009 Posts: 2

My last post, I was refering to KB not Kb, it takes 8 bits to make a byte

lionhead · **Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:25 pm**

Quad is a unit, not a size.

TrystanClarke91191 · Senior Cadet Joined: 15 Sep 2009 Posts: 20

gigabyte = 1000 megabyte
terabyte = 1000 gigabyte
gigaquad = 1000 terabyte
teraquad = 1000 treabyte

alpinedigital · **Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:53 am**

A teraquad is a measurement of information in Federation computers. Teraquads are used to measure amounts of information exceeding one trillion quads. While Federation computers still use binary code in some capacity, they also are known to use trinary code. This is much more advanced than ancient computers which used bits (limited to a "one" or "zero" state) and bytes as small information measurements, so it is impossible to compare bytes with quads.

See also: kiloquad; gigaquad
From the terminology, it seems a teraquad is perhaps one trillion quads. Given that the modern term terabyte is sometimes actually used to refer to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes (or 1,024 gigabytes), this might apply to quads also, although it is unclear if the Federation still uses any of an 8-bit based binary system that would be comparable. However, if a kiloquad is exactly 1,000 quads then a teraquad is precisely 1,000,000,000,000 quads. Writers and advisors deliberately used prefices used with bytes in modern day notation (mirroring kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte and terabyte). The terminology "gigaquad" was used to detract from comparisons possible with modern-day computing power, since reality frequently outstrips fiction when in comes to computer science. Current capabilities are exponentially greater than what scientists expected them to be only 20-30 years ago.

buffyscrubs · Ensign Joined: 09 Oct 2009 Posts: 65

I'm not sure about that but i think it's must bigger than byte!

Warpinfinity · Freshman Cadet Joined: 06 Mar 2010 Posts: 5

I always figured it was just a Terabyte, except they don't use the word 'byte' anymore, since it indicates something done in binary.

Hockey · Ensign Joined: 11 Jan 2010 Posts: 47 Location: Europe

All the answers are a nice attempt, but to me the real puzzle still is how a quad relates to a byte. How many bytes go into a quad?