Binary Prefixes Converter
Convert between binary units and decimal units
Computers store data in bits. One bit is either on (1) or off (0). Eight bits make a byte (FF or 256 different values). But this is where things get interesting. What's a kilobyte
? Kilo-
is the prefix for one thousand. So, a kilobyte would be 1,000 bytes. However, in a computer, there are 1,024 (210) bytes in a kilobyte.
This might be just a difference of 24 bytes, but gigabytes are either 1,0003 bytes or 1,0243 bytes. That's a difference of 73,741,824 bytes or about 73 megabytes.
If you bought a 100 GB hard drive, you just lost about 7% of the storage, because the computer counts by 1,024, and the manufacturer counts by 1,000.
To remedy this, the IEC created new prefixes specfically for binary units, using so-called binary prefixes.
The new units include the kibibyte,
mebibyte,
and so on. A kibibyte is 1,024 bytes, while an actual kilobyte is 1,000 bytes. For a lengthier exploration of the topic, along with where to use which kind of units, check out Wikipedia's article on binary prefixes.
| 1,073,741,824 bytes is equivalent to | |
|---|---|
| 1,048,576 kibibytes (kiB) | 1,073,741.824 kilobytes (kB) |
| 1,024 mebibytes (MiB) | 1,073.742 megabytes (MB) |
| 1 gibibytes (GiB) | 1.074 gigabytes (GB) |
| 0.001 tebibytes (TiB) | 0.001 terabytes (TB) |
| 0.000 pebibytes (PiB) | 0.000 petabytes (PB) |
| 0.000 exbibytes (EiB) | 0.000 exobytes (EB) |
| 0.000 yobibytes (YiB) | 0.000 yottabytes (YB) |