These terms are commonly used in the computing world to describe disk space or data storage space and system memory. For example, just a few years ago, we used the term Megabyte when describing hard drive space. Today, you often hear the term Gigabyte when describing hard drives. In the near future, Terabyte will become a commonly used term. But what are they? This is confusing because there are at least 3 accepted definitions for each term.
When used to describe disk storage capacity, a megabyte is one million bytes in decimal. According to Microsoft Computer Dictionary, a megabyte equals 1,000,000 bytes or 1,048,576 bytes. According to Eric S, Raymond in The New Hacker's Dictionaries, a megabyte is always equal to 1,048,576 bytes based on the argument that bytes are calculated based on base 2. So what definitions are most people choosing? choose?
When it comes to a megabyte for disk storage, hard drive manufacturers use a 1 megabyte computed as 1,000,000 bytes. This means that when you buy a 80 gigabyte hard drive, you will have a total storage space of 80 billion bytes. This is confusing because Windows uses the 1,048,576 byte rule, so when you look at the properties of a drive in Windows, an 80 gigabyte drive will have 74.56 gigabytes . Does anyone get confused? With the three accepted definitions above, there will always be some confusion in the calculation. So, how should we understand for simplicity?
Here's the simplest way to look at these terms:
- 1 Bit = Binary Digit (binary number)
- 8 Bit = 1 Byte
- 1000 Byte = 1 Kilobyte
- 1000 Kilobyte = 1 Megabyte
- 1000 Megabyte = 1 Gigabyte
- 1000 Gigabyte = 1 Terabyte
- 1000 Terabyte = 1 Petabyte
- 1000 Petabyte = 1 Exabyte
- 1000 Exabyte = 1 Zettabyte
- 1000 Zettabyte = 1 Zottabyte
- 1000 Zottabyte = 1 Brontobyte
More detailed, can be understood as follows:
A bit is the smallest unit of data a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information, such as True or False.
Byte A byte is calculated as 8 bits. A byte can represent 256 states of information, for example, numbers or combinations of numbers and letters. 1 byte can represent a character. 10 bytes can be equivalent to one word. 100 byte can be equivalent to a sentence of medium length.
Kilobyte A kilobyte is approximately 1000 bytes, in fact 1,024 bytes depending on what definition is used. A Kilobyte is equivalent to a short paragraph while 100 Kilobyte equals an A4 page.
Megabyte A Megabyte is approximately 1000 Kilobytes. When a new computer is born, a Megabyte is considered to be a huge amount of data. Today, with a 80 gigabyte hard drive on a computer is normal, a Megabyte does not make sense. An old 3-1 / 2 inch floppy disk could hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a booklet. 100 Megabytes can store several Encyclopaedias. 600 Megabytes equals the amount of data stored on a CD-ROM.
Gigabyte A Gigabyte is approximately 1000 Megabytes. A Gigabyte is a fairly common term used today when it comes to disk space or storage space. A gigabyte is the amount of data that is almost double the amount of data that a CD-ROM can store. But it's about 1000 times the capacity of a 3-1 / 2 inch floppy. A Gigabyte can hold the contents of a book that is approximately 10 meters long when stacked on a rack. 100 gigabytes can store the contents of a library's entire library.
Terabyte A terabyte is approximately one trillion bytes or 1000 gigabytes. This size is very large and is not yet a universal term. For simplicity, we make a comparison, a Terabyte can store about 3.6 million images of 300 Kilobytes or maybe about 300 hours of good quality images. A Terabyte can store 1000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ten Terabyte can store a whole library. That's a huge amount of data.
Petabyte A petabyte is approximately 1000 terabytes or one million gigabytes. It is difficult to imagine the amount of data a petabyte can store. A Petabyte can store about 20 million filing cabinets filled with text. It can store 500 billion pages of standard-size text. This amount of data will require about 500 million floppy disks to store.
Exabyte An Exabyte is approximately 1000 Petabytes. In other words, a Petabyte is roughly 10 octets or 1 billion Gigabytes. It is very difficult to compare with an Extabyte. It is said that 5 Extabyte contains a word count equivalent to all the vocabulary of the whole human race.
Zettabyte A Zettabyte is approximately 1000 Extabyte. There is nothing comparable to a Zettabyte, but to represent it will need to use a lot of 1s and 0s.
Zottabyte A Zottabyte is approximately 1000 Zettabyte. Nothing can compare to a Zottabyte.
Brontobyte A Brontobyte is approximately 1000 Zottabyte. The only thing that can be said about the size of a Brontobyte is that there are 27 digits followed by 1!
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