Know storage capacity measurements: bit, byte, KB, MB, GB, TB.

Definitions of sizes
People often get confused about storage sizes, because the different words all sound a little similar. However, it is quite easy once you know... look at the table here:
  • 1 Kilobyte (Kb) = 1,024 Bytes
  • 1 Megabyte (Mb) = 1,024 Kilobytes (or 1,048,576 Bytes)
  • 1 Gigabyte (Gb) = 1,024 Megabytes (or 1,073,741,824 Bytes)
  • 1 Terabyte (Tb) = 1,024 Gigabytes (or 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes)
Sometimes the abbreviations are written in capitals, e.g. KB=Kb, MB=Mb, GB=Gb, and TB=Tb.

To give you some idea of how this relates to things you know...
  • A CD-ROM holds around 800Mb (megabytes)

  • RAM in a modern desktop or laptop computer is usually 1Gb to 2Gb (gigabytes) these days.

  • A standard DVD holds around 4.3Gb (gigabytes) of data

  • A hard disk in a modern laptop can usually store between 120Gb and 250Gb (gigabytes).

  • Only computer servers would have a Terabyte of storage, and most servers, in a typical company for example, are much smaller than that !