1 MB contains. Units of information: which are most often used and how bytes, bits and megabytes are calculated

If you are wondering how many megabytes are in one gigabyte, check out the table below. Next, we will discuss how these units of measurement are formed, and by what principle the conversion should be made.

Information is data in various forms that can be perceived by people or special devices as a reflection of the material world that arises in the process of communication. For many it will be strange that information can be measured. Indeed, this is so, and let’s try to figure out how bits differ from bytes and what’s what.

The first thing that needs to be said is that most people use the decimal number system, which has been familiar since school. But in the case of information, a binary system will be used, which is represented as 0 and 1. Most often, this mechanism is used specifically in working with computer equipment, as a rule, we are talking about the volume of hard drives or RAM.

Why is the actual and declared capacity of hard drives different?

Many hard drive manufacturers often use this confusion. The declared capacity of the hard drive that the user purchased is, say, 500 gigabytes. But in fact, when it has already been installed and prepared for work, it turns out that its total volume fluctuates in the range of 450-460 gigabytes.

And the whole trick is that, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the amount of RAM, like all its other types, uses a binary calculation system. And manufacturers use decimal. This gives them the opportunity to allegedly “increase” memory by about 10 percent. Although in fact, buyers are simply misled.

Let's talk about number systems

The smallest unit of information will be a bit, which represents the amount of information contained in a message, halving the uncertainty of knowledge about any subject. It is followed by a byte, which is considered the basic unit of measurement. By the way, it should be noted here that the speed of information transfer is measured in bits. We are talking about kilobits, megabits and so on. By the way, many people confuse megabits and megabytes. Contrary to popular belief, these are completely different concepts and meanings. Speed will be measured in bits transferred per second, but not in bytes.

The binary number system, as mentioned above, is presented in the form of zeros and ones. A piece of information is a bit and can take the value either zero or one and nothing else. This is exactly what the beat will be. A byte, again, as mentioned, will consist of eight bits, if we talk specifically about the binary number system. Moreover, each will be written as 2 to a certain degree from 0 to 7. If you try to show it more simply, it will look like: 11101001.

This is a clear example of 256 combinations, which are encoded in a byte. But this is difficult for users, because they are used to seeing everything through the prism of the decimal system. So let's translate this, which requires simply adding all the powers of two where we have ones. To do this, we need to take 2 to the power of 0 + 2 to the power of 3 + 2 to the power of 5 + 2 to the power of 6 + 2 to the power of 7.

Another important point is the nibble or nibble as it is called. This is half a byte, that is, 4 bits. As a rule, any number from 0 to 15 can be encoded in it.

Inconsistencies in bits and bytes

As mentioned above, the information transfer rate is measured in bits. But recently, even in well-known programs, measurements are carried out in bytes. Although this is not entirely true, it is still possible. The translation in this case will be quite simple:

1 byte = 8 bits;
1 kilobyte = 8 kilobits;
1 megabyte = 8 megabits.

If the user needs to make a reverse translation, then they simply need to divide the required number by 8.

Another problem will be that the byte system itself has a number of inconsistencies that cause users problems with conversions to mega, giga, terabytes, and so on. The point here is that from the very beginning, in order to denote units of information that are larger than bytes, terms that relate to the decimal system rather than the binary system are used. For example, the prefix “tera” means multiplying by 10 to the 12th power, giga by 10 to the 9, mega by 10 to the 6, and so on.

It is for this reason that confusion arises. It would be logical to assume that 1 kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes, but this is not the case. It will have 1024 bytes.

In general, as you can see, there are certain difficulties, but if you understand them, it will quickly become clear that there is nothing difficult about this.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. What units of information do you know? You've probably heard about bytes, bits, as well as megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. However, it is not always clear how these quantities and how can you convert, for example, bytes to megabytes, bits into bytes, and gigabytes into terabytes.

The difficulty lies in the fact that we are used to operating with units of measurement in the decimal number system (everything is simple there - if there is a prefix “kilo”, then this is equivalent to multiplying by a thousand, etc.). But when measuring the volume of stored or use values from the binary system, where to convert, for example, megabytes to gigabytes, it will not be enough to carry out the usual division by a thousand. Why? Let's figure it out.

What is a byte/bit and how many bits are in a byte?

Described below units of information used in computer technology, for example, to measure the amount of RAM or the size of hard drives. The minimum unit of information is called a bit, followed by a byte, and then there are derivatives of the byte: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, etc. What is noteworthy is that, despite the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, converting these values into bytes is not a task, because simple multiplication by a thousand, million or billion is not applicable here. Why? Read below.

Also, similar units are used to measure the speed of information transmission (for example, through an Internet channel) - kilobits, megabits, gigabits, etc. Since this is speed, it refers to the number of bits (kilobits, megabits, gigabits, etc.) transmitted per second. How many bits are there in a byte and how to convert a kilobyte to a kilobit? Let's talk about this right now.

As you all know, a computer only works with numbers in the binary system, namely with zeros and ones (“Boolean algebra”, if anyone took it in college or school). One bit of information is a bit and it can take only two values - zero or one (there is a signal - there is no signal. I think that with the question what is a beat it became more or less clear.

Let's move on. What then is a byte? This is a little more complicated. One byte consists of eight bits(in binary), each of which represents a power of two (from zero to two to the seventh - counting from right to left), as shown in the figure below:

This can also be written as:

11101001

It is not difficult to understand that the total possible combinations of zeros and ones in such a construction can only be 256 (this is exactly the amount of information that can be encoded in one byte). By the way, converting a number from binary to decimal is quite simple. You just need to add up all the powers of two in those bits where there are ones. It couldn't be simpler, could it?

See for yourself. In our example, the number 233 is encoded in one byte. How can this be understood? We simply add powers of two where there is a one (i.e. there is a signal). Then it turns out that we take one (2 to the power of zero), add eight (two to the power of 3), plus 32 (two to the fifth power), plus 64 (to the sixth power), plus 128 (two to the seventh power). The total is 233 in decimal notation. As you can see, everything is very simple.

In the above figure, I split one byte into two parts of four bits. Each of these parts is called nibble or nibble. In one nibble, using four bits, you can encode just any hexadecimal number (a number from 0 to 15, or rather to F, because the numbers following nine in the hexadecimal system are designated by letters from the beginning of the English alphabet). But this is no longer important.

How many megabits are in a megabyte?

Let's be even clearer. Very often, Internet speed is measured in kilobits, megabits and gigabits, but, for example, programs display the speed in kilobytes, megabytes... How much will it be in bytes? How to convert megabits to megabytes?. Everything is simple here and without pitfalls. If there are 8 bits in one byte, then there are 8 kilobits in one kilobyte, and 8 megabits in one megabyte. Is everything clear? The same goes for gigabits, terabits, etc. The reverse translation is carried out by dividing by eight.

How many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte (bytes and kilobytes in megabytes)?

The answer to this question will no longer be so prosaic. The fact is that historically it happened that to designate units of measurement of information significantly larger than a byte, The wrong terms are used(or rather, not at all true). The fact is that, for example, the prefix “kilo” means multiplying by ten to the third power, i.e. 10 3 (per thousand), “mega” - multiplication by 10 6 (that is, per million), “giga” - by 10 9, “tera” - by 10 12, etc.

But this is a decimal system, you say, and bits and bytes belong to the binary system. And you will be absolutely right. And in the binary system there is different terminology and, what is especially important, different counting system- how many bytes are contained in 1 kilobyte (how many kilobytes are in 1 megabyte, how many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte and...). Everything is based not on powers of ten (as in the decimal system, which uses the prefixes kilo, mega, tera...), but on powers of two(in which other prefixes are already used: kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc.).

Those. in theory, to denote large units of information names should be used: kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, etc. But for a number of reasons (habit, and these units turned out to be not very euphonious; especially in the Russian version, yobibyte sounds cool, instead of yotabyte) these correct names did not take root, and instead they began to use incorrect ones, i.e. megabyte, terabyte, yotabyte and others that, in fairness, cannot be used in the binary system.

This is where all the confusion comes from. You and I all know that “kilo” is a multiplication by 10 3 (thousand). It is logical to assume that a kilobyte is simply 1000 bytes, but this is not the case. We are told that There are 1024 bytes in 1 kilobyte. And this is true, because as I explained just above, they initially began to use the wrong terminology and continue to do so to this day.

How are kilo-, mega-, giga- and other large bytes converted into regular ones? As I already said, in powers of two.

How many bytes are in 1 kilobyte - 2 10 (two to the tenth power) or those same 1024 bytes
And how many bytes are in 1 megabyte - 2 20 (two in the twentieth) or 1048576 bytes (which is equivalent to 1024 times 1024)
How many bytes are in 1 gigabyte - 2 30 or 107374824 bytes (1024x1024x1024)
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes, 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes and 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes

How to convert kilobytes into bytes, and megabytes into gigabytes and terabytes?

Full table (decimal system is also shown for comparison) Convert bytes to kilo, mega, giga and terabytes is given below:

Decimal system			Binary system
Name	Dimension	Ten at...	Name	Dimension	Deuce in...
byte	B	10 0	byte	IN	2 0
kilo byte	kB	10 3	kibi byte	KiB Kbytes	2 10
mega byte	M.B.	10 6	furniture byte	MiB MB	2 20
giga byte	G.B.	10 9	gibi byte	GiB GB	2 30
tera byte	TB	10 12	you byte	TiB TB	2 40
peta byte	P.B.	10 15	pebi byte	PiB Pbyte	2 50
exa byte	E.B.	10 18	exbi byte	EiB Ebyte	2 60
zetta byte	ZB	10 21	zebie byte	ZiB Zbyte	2 70
yotta byte	YB	10 24	Yobi byte	YiB Ybyte	2 80

Based on the table above, you can do any recalculation, but you need to keep in mind that you should compare the names from the decimal system with the formula for calculating from the binary system.

To simplify“unnecessary” data can simply be removed from the table:

Name	Dimension	Formula for converting to bytes
byte	IN	2 0
kilo byte	KB	2 10
mega byte	MB	2 20
giga byte	GB	2 30
tera byte	TB	2 40
peta byte	Pbyte	2 50
exa byte	Ebyte	2 60
zetta byte	Zbyte	2 70
yotta byte	Ybyte	2 80

Let's let's practice a little:

How many megabytes are in 1 gigabyte? That's right, 2 10 (calculated by dividing 2 30 by 2 20) or 1024 megabytes in one gigabyte.
How many kilobytes are in a megabyte? Yes, the same amount - 1024 (calculated by dividing 2 20 by 2 10).
How many kilobytes are in 1 terabyte? This is a little more complicated, because we need to divide 2 40 by 2 10, which will give us the result of 2 30 or 1073741824 kilobytes contained in one terabyte (and not a billion, as would be the case in the decimal system).
What do you need to do to convert bytes to megabytes? We look at the table: divide the available number of bytes by 2 20 (by 107374824). Those. You're not just dividing by a million as you would in decimal (essentially moving the decimal point to the left six places), but dividing by a slightly larger number, resulting in a smaller megabyte than you expected.
How many bytes are in 1 kilobyte? Obviously, there are 2 10 or 1024 bytes in one kilobyte.

I think the principle is clear to you.

Why is a terabyte hard drive 900 gigabytes in size?

However, many hard drive manufacturers exploit the confusion described above. Have you ever been surprised that if you buy, for example, a 1 terabyte disk, after installing it in your computer and formatting it, you get a little more than 900 gigabytes. Where do almost ten percent of the size of the railway declared by the manufacturer disappear?

The fact is that, for example, when measuring the amount of RAM, they always use the binary (correct) calculation system, when 1 kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, but hard drive manufacturers went for a trick and count the sizes of their products in decimals megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. What does this mean and what benefits does it give in practice?

Well, look for yourself - one kilobyte of memory contains 1000 bytes. It seems like a nonsense difference, but with the current sizes of hard drives measured in terabytes, everything results in a loss of tens of gigabytes.

Thus, it turns out that a terabyte disk contains simply 10 12 bytes (a trillion). However, when formatting such a disk, the calculation will be carried out using the correct binary system and as a result, out of a trillion bytes we will get only 0.9094947017729282379150390625 real (not decimal) terabytes. To recalculate, you simply need to divide 10 12 by 2 40 - see the comparison table above.

That's it. With this simple trick, they sell us a product that is ten percent less useful than we expect. From a legal point of view, there is no way to dig into it, but from the ordinary point of view of the average person, we are being quite misled. True, depending on the manufacturer, the figure may vary slightly, but in the end you won’t get a terabyte.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

In what units is information measured?

When transmitting absolutely any information, a person encodes it in one way or another. For example, human thoughts are conveyed through words. Important scientific truths are “encrypted” using formulas. A formula is a kind of mathematical code. The deaf and mute also have their own “code” - this is sign language, a language that is understandable for any musician - these are notes, etc.

A computer cannot read and write the way a person can. Consequently, the machine also needs to represent and encode information. It has been mathematically proven that it is very easy to represent any information from the material world as a sequence of numbers 1 and 0. These are binary digits or bits. This choice is far from accidental, since this method of encoding information is very simple to organize technically: 1 – there is a signal, 0 – there is no signal. The disadvantage of this method is the very long codes. However, it turned out that technology “understands” a large number of simple signals much better than a small number of complex ones.

In the 60s of the last century, when IBM developed a series of third-generation computers, they adopted a standard for measuring the amount of information and memory - bytes. A byte is a sequence of 8 binary digits, or bits. Thus, one byte is equal to eight bits.

As we said above, one bit can be equal to either 0 or 1. For example, using two bits you can encrypt exactly four values: 00, 01, 10, 11. The meaning of the entire byte depends on the positions that the ones occupy in it and zeros. It is not difficult to guess what the number of different combinations of bits in one byte is: 28 = 256. Thus, a code one byte long can be equal to one of 256 different values.

You can encode anything with bytes and bits, but the easiest way to do this is for characters and numbers. One byte is enough to encode one character. To encode an integer, you need two or four bytes; for a real number, you need 4, 6, or 8 bytes.

The next unit for measuring the amount of information is 1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes. Typically, one disk sector holds 0.5 Kilobytes or 512 bytes of information. The amount of information that can be recorded on a now outdated storage medium, a floppy disk, is 1440 Kilobytes.

After a kilobyte, the next one is a megabyte. 1 Megabyte is equal to 1024 Kilobytes, or 1024*1024 = 1048576 bytes. Computer RAM is measured in Megabytes, and the volume of the first hard drives was measured in the same units. To measure the volume of modern storage media, much larger storage media are used - Gigabytes and Terabytes. There are 1024 megabytes in one gigabyte, and 1024 gigabytes in one terabyte.

Attention!!

Sometimes, instead of kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, obtained as powers of two, units of the same spelling and sound are used, but the meaning of which is different: these are powers of the number 10. According to this logic, 1 kilobyte = 10 3 bytes = 1000 bytes. To understand what and when is used, we agreed that kbyte, for example, is a power of 10 (kbyte with a small letter). Kbyte (capitalized) is a proper noun and a power of 2.

How many Kilobits to Megabits

There are 1024 Kilobits in one megabit. So, to convert megabits to kilobits, you need to multiply megabits by 1024.

Analyzing the requests of visitors to our site, I see regular visits for queries such as “500 MB - how much?”, “1 GB of Internet - is it a lot or a little?” or “how much Internet traffic is needed for a smartphone per month”? Understanding what users want to find out - which Internet package they should connect to their phone, tablet or USB modem for a computer, for example, in the country, I will try to give them general recommendations.

First of all, 1 MB (megabyte) contains 1024 KB (kilobytes), and 1 GB (gigabyte) contains 1024 MB. Accordingly, an Internet package of 500 MB is conditionally 0.5 GB, but to be precise, a little less.

What “weighs” today?

1 page of the site. This concept is flexible. If you are visiting a simple text page (for example, home page site " Mobile networks"), then it will “eat up” only about 60 KB of traffic. If the page contains photographs and other graphic elements, then everything depends on their quantity. If you average it out, an article page with illustrations usually “weighs” 200-400 KB. If you opened, for example, a large review of a smartphone, then we can already talk about several megabytes! In total, just reading news, you will spend about 200 KB per page load. Mobile versions of sites may consume less, but to be honest, I don’t like them.

1 music video. Here everything depends on the size of the audio clip (we will talk about the mp3 format) - its length, and quality (bitrate). Again, if you average, then count on 3-5 MB per listen or download.

1 movie. The size of a full 1.5 hour movie varies greatly depending on its quality (RIP, DVD, etc.) and compression ratio. If traffic is limited or there are problems with speed, it is better to look for 700 MB movies as DVDRIP or other RIP. There are still quite a lot of films of this size, and most of them are of quite decent quality. For viewing on a laptop or tablet computer that's it. Many more films come in 1.4 GB sizes. Many of them visually differ little or not at all from their 700 MB counterparts, it all depends on the integrity of their conversion and compression. If you have a lot of Internet, the speed of 3G or 4G (LTE) allows you, you are critical of quality, want to enjoy multi-channel sound and have a huge high-resolution screen, then you can download movies in DVD quality, which already “weigh” 5- 10-15 GB or more.

Streaming video. If you are going to watch online movies (and your speed allows), for example, from ivi.ru, then keep in mind that even though they have a maximum compression ratio (some services allow you to change it - quality settings), you will still watch the movie will reduce your traffic by an average of 700 megabytes. With online TV it’s the same. A video session via Skype is similar, although a lot depends on the resolution of the web camera. But it may well take several megabytes per minute.

IP telephony. Traffic for a conversation over IP (similarly for Skype) will cost approximately 128 kB/minute. Maybe more. But “on 5 MB” you can communicate quite well. We are talking only about audio, not video communication.

All sorts of little things. Checking mail, ICQ, correspondence via Skype, social networks (Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter). You don’t need a lot of Internet here, unless, of course, you are regularly sent “heavy” attachments by mail and you are not a very active user social networks, pressing the F5 key every minute. By the way, social network pages “weigh” the same as others on average sites, but at the same time they regularly “self-update”, monitoring new messages that indicate your traffic.

Reminder for users of USB modems with limited traffic

If you purchased a relatively small Internet package to use it in desktop computer or laptop using the Internet mobile operator, and in the role of a modem - a “whistle”, keep in mind that you can significantly save traffic (so that you don’t have to pay for all sorts of “turbo buttons” later) by disabling a variety of system updates for your programs, applications or operating system. And if I won’t advise you to disable antivirus updates, then at least temporarily it’s quite possible to refuse very voracious Windows updates. And they sometimes “eat up” your traffic many times more than you do, which can be an unpleasant surprise for you after just a few days.

How much internet do you need for a smartphone?

The smartphone lives its “smartphone life”, regularly visiting the Internet for updates background, checking your mail, synchronizing, etc. It doesn’t matter what platform it runs on - Android, Windows Phone, iOS (iPhone), or even the ancient OS Symbian or Bada. Therefore, spending 50 MB per day on his business is quite normal. And this is 1.5 GB. per month! Of course, they can be reduced to 1 GB or less if you disable updates various programs or turn off the Internet itself for long periods of time, but then the question arises - why do you need a smartphone? As a result, know that if the operator happily informs you about an Internet package of 500 MB (about 0.5 GB) within the tariff, with full use of the device (together with browsing, WhatsApp, social networks, correspondence in instant messengers, etc.) you this may not be enough even for half a month. A 1 GB package is a stretch. Optimally - about 1.5 GB, or even better “BIT” or “Super BIT” (the names of unlimited options for MTS; they may differ for other operators). Although the latter are considered unlimited options, they have a certain daily traffic quota without speed limits, after which it drops significantly. But, in general, it’s enough for a smartphone. At the same time, “Super BIT” differs from “BIT” in that it works not only in “ home region", but also throughout Russia. Otherwise, outside your “home region” you will be subject to roaming with corresponding prices.

Computer technologies have already become so deeply integrated into the lives of ordinary citizens that, probably, nowadays almost everyone knows how many megabytes are in a gigabyte. At least he thinks he knows. It is not very often that you hear the correct answer to this seemingly elementary and childish question. With all this, the answer options are always different.

megabyte and gigabyte?

These days it is quite difficult to find people who do not know what these two words mean - megabyte and gigabyte. These terms are used in the computer world specifically to describe the space required to store files or the capacity of a storage device.

On at the moment gigabyte is the most common term that is very often used to describe the size of both movies or computer games, and hard drive or RAM. Although the term terabyte may soon displace the most common today from everyday life computer concept, so it is quite possible that soon it will not be necessary to know how many megabytes are in a gigabyte.

Do you need to know the number of megabytes in a gigabyte?

Few people will argue with the statement that you can use a personal computer without knowing how many megabytes are in a gigabyte. However, judge for yourself: these days, almost every schoolchild knows basic computer information: computer science lessons are not in vain.

Every day we all come across bits, bytes, kilobytes and other units of measurement of computer information, because it is with their help that we can measure operational or internal memory devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, personal computers, flash cards, MP3 players and others.

Internet users almost constantly deal with megabytes and gigabytes, especially if they download to their personal computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone any program, audio recording or film. Knowing how long a particular file downloaded from the Internet takes is extremely important, because using this knowledge, you can understand how long it will take to download a song, movie, or computer game and is there enough free space on the flash drive for this?

So how many megabytes are in a gigabyte?

Initially, it may seem that converting megabytes to gigabytes is very simple. Surely, each of us remembers from our school days that “giga” means a billion, while “mega” means a million. Hence, the answer to the question of how many megabytes are in one gigabyte would seem logical. To convert from megabytes to gigabytes, you just need to multiply the number by a thousand, and the result will not be long in coming. But that was not the case. There are not 1000 megabytes in a gigabyte, as the vast majority believe, but 1024.

Why not 1000?

As you know, absolutely all computers operate in numerals, that is, in their work they use only two digits - 0 and 1. In turn, a unit of information that can take the value 0 or 1 is called a bit. Soon a byte appeared that included 8 bits. Time passed, technology improved, and over time it became clear that the byte was still very small, and larger units were needed to measure information.

Soon they remembered the international system for measuring quantities. However, in computer science it was much more convenient to measure quantities in powers of two, so together with 1000 it was decided to choose the number 1024, since it is 10 2. After this, the binary “kilo” became equal to 1024. Based on the above, we can confidently say how many megabytes are in gigabyte - 1024.