EMZETT.Gigabyte
In short: A gigabyte (GB) is 1,000,000,000 bytes (10⁹). It is the decimal unit manufacturers use for storage sizes.
In more detail: The SI prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera stand for powers of 1000. A byte has 8 bits. Next to it there is the binary unit gibibyte (GiB) with 2³⁰ bytes. The two are often confused in everyday life.
In Depth
| Unit | Meaning | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 kB | kilobyte | 1,000 |
| 1 MB | megabyte | 1,000,000 |
| 1 GB | gigabyte | 1,000,000,000 |
| 1 TB | terabyte | 1,000,000,000,000 |
- Why does Windows show less? A “1 TB” disk has 10¹² bytes. Windows divides by 1024 but still calls the result “GB” (meaning GiB): about 931 GB.
- Data rates: networks are given in bits per second (Mbit/s), files in bytes. A 100 Mbit/s line manages at most about 12.5 MB/s.
- Rule of thumb: about 1,000 photos at 3 MB are roughly 3 GB.