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May 21, 2025 8 mins

We explore the fundamentals of digital storage and how it powers precision agriculture, covering basic bytes to the massive petabyte servers at GK Technology that store agricultural imagery and data.

• A byte equals eight binary bits and typically represents a single character or piece of data in computer language
• Digital storage units progress from kilobytes (thousand) to megabytes (million) to gigabytes (billion) to terabytes (trillion) to petabytes (thousand terabytes)
• GK Technology's Halstead office maintains a petabyte of storage containing agricultural data for most of the United States and three Canadian provinces
• Storage includes shapefile formats, NAIP imagery, Lidar data, and two satellite libraries: Landsat (30m resolution back to 1984) and Sentinel (10m resolution from 2016)
• Precision ag software users access this massive data repository when creating drainage maps or automated management zones
• Higher resolution imagery like drone photos requires significantly more storage space, creating challenges for agricultural data management

https://gktechinc.com/

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jodi (00:00):
And now it's time for a tiny bite of knowledge In a
world with 32 and 64-bitsoftware.

Sarah (00:20):
Enter in the byte, that's byte with a Y Roar Roar.
So, Jodi, what is a bite whenwe're talking about computers?

(00:45):
What is a byte?

Jodi (00:47):
A byte is a measure of digital storage, and typically
what this means is that onesingle byte is equal to eight
bits.

Sarah (00:59):
And a byte usually represents a single character,
such as a letter, a number incomputer language.

Jodi (01:07):
And fun fact.
So like these 8 bits.
What those bits refer to arelike the binary 0s and 1s, right
, so like if you really break itdown or you think about like
the matrix, where they've got abunch of 0s and 1s floating down
on the screen, all those littlezero and one binaries.
Each one of them is a singlebit and eight of those equals a

(01:29):
byte.

Sarah (01:29):
Yeah, you commonly hear about bytes used for computer
memory or storage terms.
So I mean it's pretty oftenthat those of us geeks and
precision agriculture aresitting down and we're going,
hey, how big is your storagethere?
Do you get a 64 gigabyte, oneterabyte, two terabyte and over

(01:53):
in Halstead we even talk abouthaving a petabyte of storage on
our servers for imagery data.

Jodi (01:59):
How many gigs of storage is a petabyte?

Sarah (02:02):
Let's start by backing up and talking about how much is a
kilobyte?
So you've got a byte, thenyou've got a kilobyte that's a
thousand bytes.
Then you've got a megabyte,which is a million bytes.
You've got a gigabyte, which isa billion bytes.

Jodi (02:20):
And then a terabyte.
A terabyte is-hmm, or onequadrillion bytes, and a
petabyte is 1,000 terabytes1,000 terabytes.

Sarah (02:34):
I mean, I'm thinking about like I've got a USB stick
here that's sitting with oneterabyte of data.

Jodi (02:41):
That's a lot of storage.
You have a USB stick with oneterabyte storage.

Sarah (02:46):
Mm-hmm.

Jodi (02:47):
Yes, I do.

Sarah (02:48):
That's amazing, isn't that amazing?
It is amazing, yes, veryamazing.
Got a lot of stuff on there,lots of pictures, that's great,
but it's still a terabyte, and apetabyte, you said, is a
thousand terabytes.
A thousand terabytes, that's alot.
Now, on that petabyte ofstorage, we actually have our

(03:09):
data on the servers backed up.
Yes, we do, but you got torealize, to put things in
context, for what's over therefor data, I think we're
currently missing.
What is it, Jodi?
Eight states in the UnitedStates for data on those servers
, something like that.
So we have the majority of theUnited States on there.
We've got at least threeprovinces in Canada, and we're

(03:32):
talking Alberta, Saskatchewanand Manitoba, so provinces that
have rather large land masses tothem.
The data that is stored upthere includes any shapefile
formats that help show us wheretownship sections, ranges, are
located, as well as all of the,for example, nape imagery that

(03:54):
we would have in the UnitedStates.
That's a United States program.
Unfortunately, in Canada you'renot going to have that, but
those are images that are flownonce a year or once every two
years.
It's very detailed imagery andit takes up a lot of room,
especially these newer images,as the as the newer imagery is
more detailed and contain morebands of light than the old ones
used to.

(04:14):
We also have over there, youknow, Landsat data that's 30
meter resolution, and thoselibraries go back to like 1984.
And we've also got Sentineldata that's 10 meter resolution.
Okay, so we've got a lot ofstorage, a lot of storage.
You could even say we took abite out of storage.

Jodi (04:33):
So, even though you and I do Tiny Bytes, the GK office has
a big bite of storage.
It's like a monster, monsterbite.

Sarah (04:44):
It's a monster bite over there.
Let's back up, though, and talkabout that petabyte that's over
there.
So, as I was saying, we've gotall of you know, we've got all
of that NAIP imagery.
In addition, we've got Lidardata.
Some of that data, and wepretty much have got Lidar data
for wherever our clients wouldhave asked for it around the
United States.

(05:04):
We also have two differentlibraries of satellite
information Landsat data thatgoes all the way back to 1984.
Those images were not recordedas frequently throughout the
growing season and it's 30 meterresolution data, but it goes
back to 1984.
Whereas on the Sentinel datalibrary we have more images in

(05:29):
season, that library only goesback to about 2016, maybe 17,
right in that range, and thatdata is 10 meter resolution data
, so it's more detailed thanthat Landsat.
We have more images, moredetail, but fewer years for the

(05:51):
Sentinel data and the Landsatlibrary has a much longer
history to it and less detailedand fewer images during the
growing season and really, whenyou start thinking about all
those imagery components, thatreally starts adding up to how
much what is using the data onour servers over there and, in

(06:12):
case you are an ADMS user, whenyou go into our servers to
download data, to make drainagemaps or to automate zones.

Jodi (06:22):
You are going into that server and getting those data
out of there, so of course, likewith the Landsat images versus
the Sentinel, because Landsat isless detailed it's got a lower
resolution, so 30 meters versus10 meter resolution.
It's going to take less bytesof storage for each of those

(06:44):
Landsat images versus SentinelCorrect the more detailed the
image is, generally speaking,the more data it's going to take
to store them.

Sarah (06:55):
That's something we need to really think about in
precision agriculture.
So we think a lot aboutsatellite imagery and those
comparisons that Jodi's justmaking between Landsat and
Sentinel data.
One of the things that we needto think about is this push
towards going to drones, becausethose pictures that are coming
off of drones take up a pile ofspace.

(07:17):
Yeah, we can run them in oursoftware and and work with them
in our software.
That's great.
But, boy, you put one image ona one terabyte jump drive and it
doesn't take a whole lot, verymany images to take up a lot of
that space.
So space and what exactly abyte is, what exactly a terabyte

(07:38):
is?
A megabyte, gigabyte, petabyteit's interesting to really think
about and the challenges thatcome along with that storage.
So this might be a tiny byte.
So this might be a tiny bite.

Jodi (07:59):
Over in Halstad we have a petabyte which is a monster bite
.
Tune in next time for a tinybite of knowledge from GK
Technology, where we have a mapand an app for that.
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