Assuming there are 12 000 different block states this means that 14 bits are needed per block and hence one monecraft world needs 60 000 000 × 60 000 000 × 385 × 14 = 1.9404 × 10^19 bits or 2.425 billion Gibibytes. Where does all these data get stored?
In: Engineering
Only a small part of the world is generated when a map is first generated: the rest is only generated if the player walks close to that area.
As such, most of the possible world map would not be generated in a normal playthrough, so file size is rarely an issue.
Others have already covered the generation on demand aspect so I’ll just add: compression:
It will store a range of blocks that are all water, dirt, air, netherack, whatever rather than storing each and every block individually. it’s not that different than how images and video are compressed.
Minecraft saves only explored areas, uses compressed data in chunks (small areas loaded as you explore), and limits world height to save storage space on your computer. This way, even huge worlds stay manageable.
Minecraft uses a mathematical formula to create a world. The world you get us based on a number that Minecraft calls the “seed” number. From that number it creates all the terrain, water, trees, caves and so on. If you use the same seed you get the same world every time.
Because of this it knows what, say, chunk 50,40 looks like before you visit it. So no need to save it until after you visit.
Thus only the parts you’ve seen are saved, which is why you can have such a huge possible world without taking up all the disk space.
One thing that used to happen is any time they changed how world generation works there would be a sudden jump between areas you had already visited and new areas where the different parts of the world no longer generated the same and the terrain wouldn’t fit together.
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