Enter a number in the From field, select units, and then click Convert.
This tool performs conversion between the most common data storage capacity, file and memory size measurement units, including TB, GB, MB, TiB, GiB, and MiB.
Enter the initial value you wish to convert in the From filed, select the initial and the target measurement units, and then click the Convert button.
For your convenience this tool will also convert the entered value into other often used data storage units.
Computer data storage volume, disk capacity, file and memory sizes are measured using various units from both decimal-based (KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, etc.) and binary-based (KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB, PiB etc.) systems.
The difference between decimal-based and binary-based storage measurement units lies in the way the values are represented and calculated. The decimal-based units are expressed as powers of 10 and the binary-based units - as powers of 2.
Commonly used storage capacity units with prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. could often cause confusion because it's not always clear whether the values are expressed in the decimal or binary system. To address this issue, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) introduced binary prefixes such as kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc. The "bi" in these prefixes signifies "binary". These binary-based units help differentiate between the decimal and binary systems, ensuring clarity in expressing data storage values.
Both systems are based on the following two units:
Powers of 2 (Binary-based Units):
Each higher binary-based unit is 1,024 (2^10) times larger than the unit preceding it.
Powers of 10 (Decimal-based Units):
Each higher decimal-based unit is 1,000 times larger than the unit preceding it. This is consistent with the International System of Units (SI) used for most measurements.
Kilobyte (KB) and kibibyte (KiB) are commonly used to measure small amounts of data.
Megabyte (MB) and mebibyte (MiB) are often used to measure the size of files, documents, and small applications.
Gigabyte (GB) and gibibyte (GiB) are frequently used to describe the storage capacity of hard drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), computer RAM, and the size of large files.
Terabyte (TB) and tebibyte (TiB) are commonly used to measure the capacity of hard drives, SSDs, and small to medium-sized storage systems.
Petabyte (PB) and pebibyte (PiB) are used to describe capacities of large-scale storage systems often found in enterprise-level data centers and cloud storage systems.
Exabyte (EB) and exbibyte (EiB) are used to measure massive data storage capacities and are often associated with big data analytics and scientific research.
The difference between decimal-based units and binary-based units becomes apparent when dealing with larger storage sizes. Due to the discrepancy between powers of 10 and powers of 2, storage capacities expressed in decimal-based units appear larger comparing to the binary-based values.
For example, let's consider a disk drive advertised with a capacity of 1 terabyte (TB) using decimal-based units. In this case, the capacity is stated as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (10^12 bytes). However, if we calculate the capacity of the same drive using binary-based units, it would be approximately 0.909495 tebibytes (TiB) or 931.32 gibibytes. Since many computer operating systems report disk capacity using binary-based units, the difference between the reported and advertised capacity values may come as a surprise to some users. They may expect the new drive they've just added to the system to have the same capacity as advertised, but due to the different unit systems, it may appear as if the drive has suddenly "shrunk".