Data Storage Unit Conversion Guide
Digital data is stored and transmitted in binary units. The fundamental unit is the bit (0 or 1). Eight bits make a byte, and larger units scale by powers of 1,024 (computers use binary) rather than 1,000 (as the SI prefix system suggests). This distinction between binary and decimal prefixes causes confusion, particularly with hard drive capacity specifications.
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Formula
Data Storage Converter
Convert data sizes between bytes, KB, MB, GB, and TB.
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Worked Example
Given:
Related Calculators
FAQs
Why do hard drives show less capacity than advertised?
Hard drive manufacturers use decimal prefixes (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) while operating systems display capacity using binary prefixes (1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes). A '1 TB' drive has 10¹² bytes, but Windows shows this as approximately 931 GB because it uses binary 2¹⁰ = 1,024 per prefix step.
What is the difference between megabits and megabytes?
Internet speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps), while file sizes are in megabytes (MB). There are 8 bits per byte, so a 100 Mbps internet connection downloads at approximately 12.5 MB per second. When comparing download speeds to file sizes, always divide Mbps by 8.
What are kibibytes, mebibytes, and gibibytes?
These are the formally correct binary prefix units: 1 kibibyte (KiB) = 1,024 bytes, 1 mebibyte (MiB) = 1,048,576 bytes, 1 gibibyte (GiB) = 1,073,741,824 bytes. They were introduced to eliminate ambiguity. Linux and macOS now use GiB, while Windows still shows GiB values labelled as GB.