Data Size Converter
Convert between B, KB, MB, GB, TB, PB in both decimal (1000) and binary (1024) systems.
Decimal vs Binary, Explained
Marketing teams use decimal (1 GB = 10⁹ bytes). Operating systems historically use binary (1 GiB = 2³⁰ bytes). The binary-unit names (KiB, MiB, GiB) were standardised in 1998 to clear the confusion, but labels in software still lag behind.
- 1 KB = 1,000 B | 1 KiB = 1,024 B
- 1 MB = 1,000,000 B | 1 MiB = 1,048,576 B
- 1 GB = 10⁹ B | 1 GiB = 2³⁰ B ≈ 7.4% more
Frequently Asked Questions
Decimal vs binary — what's the difference?
Decimal: 1 GB = 1,000 MB (used by disk manufacturers, ISPs). Binary: 1 GiB = 1,024 MiB (used by OS, RAM, filesystems). This is why a 'terabyte' drive shows 931 GB in Windows.
Why does my 1 TB drive show 931 GB?
The drive is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes (decimal TB). Windows divides by 1024 (binary), giving 931 GiB — but still labels it 'GB'. Both are correct; just different bases.
What is a KiB, MiB, GiB?
Binary units (IEC standard, 1998). KiB = 1024 B. MiB = 1024 KiB. Used in Linux and increasingly in technical docs to disambiguate from decimal KB/MB/GB.
How big is a petabyte?
1 PB = 1,000 TB = 1 million GB. Google's combined daily processing is in the many-petabytes range. A 4K movie uncompressed is ~50 GB, so a PB holds 20,000 of them.