💾 Computer Science & Digital Storage
Data Storage & Memory Unit Converter
Convert digital data between Decimal (SI: KB, MB, GB, TB) and Binary (IEC: KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB) standards with exact bit precision.
Quick Presets:
1 GB to GiB
1 TB to GiB (Windows OS Drive)
100 Mbps to MB/s (Download speed)
1 GiB to MiB
1 GB to MB
Converted Data Size
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 0.931323 Gibibytes (GiB)
Equivalent Storage Across Standard Formats:
Decimal (SI) vs. Binary (IEC) Standards Explained
In computer science, confusion often arises because the metric prefixes (kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-) were traditionally used by operating systems to denote powers of two ($2^{10} = 1024$) instead of powers of ten ($10^3 = 1000$). To standardize this, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) established distinct binary prefix standards in 1998:
Decimal Standard (SI, 1000-Based)
Used by storage drive manufacturers (HDD, SSD, Flash drives), networking equipment, and macOS:
- 1 Kilobyte (KB) = $10^3$ = 1,000 Bytes
- 1 Megabyte (MB) = $10^6$ = 1,000,000 Bytes
- 1 Gigabyte (GB) = $10^9$ = 1,000,000,000 Bytes
- 1 Terabyte (TB) = $10^{12}$ = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes
Binary Standard (IEC, 1024-Based)
Used by computer RAM memory, CPU architectures, and Microsoft Windows file systems:
- 1 Kibibyte (KiB) = $2^{10}$ = 1,024 Bytes
- 1 Mebibyte (MiB) = $2^{20}$ = 1,048,576 Bytes
- 1 Gibibyte (GiB) = $2^{30}$ = 1,073,741,824 Bytes
- 1 Tebibyte (TiB) = $2^{40}$ = 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes
Frequently Asked Questions
Internet service providers (ISPs) advertise bandwidth in Megabits per second (Mbps) with a lowercase 'b'. File sizes on your computer are measured in Megabytes (MB) with an uppercase 'B'. Because 1 Byte = 8 bits, divide your advertised internet speed by 8. (e.g. A 200 Mbps plan downloads at a maximum theoretical rate of 200 / 8 = 25 MB/s).
A bit is the smallest unit of digital data (a binary 0 or 1). A nibble consists of 4 bits (half a byte, representing a single hexadecimal digit 0–F). A byte consists of 8 bits, which can represent 256 distinct values ($2^8$), sufficient to store a single ASCII character.