Data Storage Converter

A megabyte (MB) is a decimal unit equal to 1,000,000 bytes (1000^2), while a mebibyte (MiB) is a binary unit equal to 1,048,576 bytes (1024^2). They differ by about 4.86 percent, and the gap widens with each step up, so a gibibyte is roughly 7.4 percent larger than a gigabyte. Drive makers advertise capacity in decimal MB and GB, while many operating systems report binary MiB and GiB.

The manufacturer sells the drive in decimal terabytes, so 1 TB means 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Windows then divides by 1024 three times and labels the result GB, even though it is really gibibytes: 1,000,000,000,000 divided by 1024^3 is about 931 GiB. No space is missing, the same byte count is just shown in binary units under a decimal-looking label.

One byte is 8 bits, so you multiply bytes by 8 to get bits and divide bits by 8 to get bytes. Bits (lowercase b) usually measure data rates such as Mbps, while bytes (uppercase B) measure file sizes and storage. For example, a 100 Mbps connection moves at most 12.5 megabytes per second.

First express the amount in bytes, then divide by the size of the target unit. Since 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes and 1 GiB is 1,073,741,824 bytes, GiB equals GB times 1,000,000,000 divided by 1,073,741,824, which is about GB times 0.931. For instance, 256 GB is roughly 238.4 GiB. This converter handles the bytes step for you and shows every unit at once.

They are the IEC binary prefixes defined in ISO/IEC 80000-13, created to remove the old ambiguity in words like kilobyte and megabyte. A kibibyte (KiB) is 1024 bytes, a mebibyte (MiB) is 1024^2 bytes, a gibibyte (GiB) is 1024^3 bytes, and a tebibyte (TiB) is 1024^4 bytes. Each step multiplies by 1024 instead of the decimal 1000.

It depends on the context. Use base 1000 (KB, MB, GB) for storage marketing, networking, and SI-correct reporting, and use base 1024 (KiB, MiB, GiB) when you need the values an operating system or memory chip actually allocates. RAM is always sized in binary units, while disk and network specs are usually decimal. This converter shows both at the same time so you can match whichever your tool expects.