Author: Brady Gavin / Source: howtogeek.com
You’ve no doubt heard the terms gigabytes, terabytes, or petabytes thrown around before, but what exactly do they mean in terms of real-world storage? Let’s take a closer look at storage sizes.
Words like byte, megabyte, gigabyte, and petabyte all refer to amounts of digital storage.
And they sometimes get confused with terms like megabit and gigabit. It’s useful to know exactly what these terms mean (and how they relate to one another) when comparing storage sizes on hard drives, tablets, and flash storage devices. It’s also useful when comparing data transfer rates if you’re shopping for internet service or networking gear.Bits, Bytes, and Kilobytes
First, let’s take a look at the basics of digital storage with some of the lower level capacities.
The smallest unit of storage is called a bit (b). It’s only capable of storing a single binary digit—either a 1 or 0. When we refer to a bit, especially as part of a larger word, we often use a lower-case “b” in its place. For example, a megabit is one thousand bits. When we shorten something like 45 megabits, we’d use 45 Mb.
One step up from a bit is a byte (B). A byte is eight bits, and is about what you need to store a single character of text. We use a capital “B” as a shortened form of byte. For example, it takes around 10 B to store an average word.
The next step up from a byte is a kilobyte (KB), which is equivalent to 1,024 bytes of data (or 8,192 bits). We shorten kilobytes to KB, so, for example, it takes around 100 KB to store a single page of plain text.
And with those smaller measurements out of the way, we can now take a look at the terms you’re more likely to hear when shopping for your gadgets.
Megabytes (MB)
There are 1,024 KB in one megabyte (MB). Through…
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