About

Data storage management requires a clear distinction between marketing claims and technical reality. Hard drive manufacturers typically use decimal units where one kilobyte equals one thousand bytes, while operating systems often calculate in binary where one kibibyte equals one thousand and twenty-four bytes. This discrepancy leads to the common confusion of seeing a "1 TB" drive appear as only "931 GB" in Windows. This converter resolves that ambiguity by offering distinct modes for Metric and IEC standards. It is essential for developers optimizing database storage and IT professionals planning server capacity.

Formulas

The conversion relies on the chosen base. For decimal (Base 10), the multiplier is 1000:

Value = Base × 1000ⁿ

For binary (Base 2), used by most Operating Systems, the multiplier is 1024:

Value = Base × 1024ⁿ

Reference Data

Decimal (SI)	Bytes (10^n)	Binary (IEC)	Bytes (2^n)	Difference
1 KB (Kilobyte)	1,000	1 KiB (Kibibyte)	1,024	2.4%
1 MB (Megabyte)	1,000,000	1 MiB (Mebibyte)	1,048,576	4.9%
1 GB (Gigabyte)	1,000,000,000	1 GiB (Gibibyte)	1,073,741,824	7.4%
1 TB (Terabyte)	1,000,000,000,000	1 TiB (Tebibyte)	1,099,511,627,776	10.0%
1 PB (Petabyte)	10¹⁵	1 PiB (Pebibyte)	1,125,899,906,842,624	12.6%
1 EB (Exabyte)	10¹⁸	1 EiB (Exbibyte)	~1.15 × 10¹⁸	15.3%
1 ZB (Zettabyte)	10²¹	1 ZiB (Zebibyte)	~1.18 × 10²¹	18.1%
1 YB (Yottabyte)	10²⁴	1 YiB (Yobibyte)	~1.21 × 10²⁴	20.9%

Frequently Asked Questions

This is due to the Decimal vs. Binary definition. The manufacturer built 500,000,000,000 bytes (500 * 1000^3). Your computer divides this by 1024^3 (1,073,741,824) to display Gigabytes, resulting in approximately 465.6 GiB.

A Kibibyte is the IEC standard unit for 1024 bytes. It was introduced to eliminate the ambiguity of "Kilobyte", which could mean either 1000 or 1024 bytes depending on context. If you see "KiB", it strictly means binary.

Network speed is almost always measured in decimal bits (e.g., Mbps = Megabits per second, Base 10). Storage is usually Bytes. Be careful not to confuse Bits (b) with Bytes (B), where 1 Byte = 8 Bits.