A byte is a unit of data that typically consists of 8 bits. Historically, this reflected the amount of data required to store an ASCII value to represent one of up to 256 different characters of text.
Variations[]
- A binary kilobyte (KiB) consists of 1,024 bytes ( 210 )
- A binary megabyte (MiB) consists of 1,024 kilobytes, or 1,048,576 bytes ( 220 )
- A binary gigabyte (GiB) consists of 1,024 megabytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes ( 230 )
- A binary terabyte (TiB) consists of 1,024 gigabytes, or 1,099,511,627,776 bytes ( 240 )
- A binary petabyte (PiB) consists of 1,024 terabytes, or 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes ( 250 )
- A binary exabyte (EiB) consists of 1,024 petabytes, or 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes ( 260 )
Some companies, such as Apple in 2009, switched from using binary values to decimals, causing a "megabyte" to report 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1,048,576 bytes, as had been done in the past. This created an illusion of a slight increase in data capacity (memory and storage).[1][2]
- A decimal kilobyte (kB) consists of 1,000 bytes ( 103 )
- A decimal megabyte (MB) consists of 1,000 kilobytes, or 1,000,000 bytes ( 106 )
- A decimal gigabyte (GB) consists of 1,000 megabytes, or 1,000,000,000 bytes ( 109 )
- A decimal terabyte (TB) consists of 1,000 gigabytes, or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes ( 1012 )
- A decimal petabyte (PB) consists of 1,000 terabytes, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes ( 1015 )
- A decimal exabyte (EB) consists of 1,000 petabytes, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes ( 1018 )
References[]
- ↑ Jason Snell. "Snow Leopard's new maths", Macworld, 2009-08-28. Retrieved on 2011-04-13.
- ↑ How Mac OS X reports drive capacity. Apple Inc. (2009-08-27). Retrieved on 2009-10-16.
See also[]
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