Manipulate units of storage

Units of Storage

As we store more data and information on our secondary storage devices and media, it is important that
we know how large a file is and how much space we have left on our device.

Let's see if we can understand these concepts of data size, storage capacities, flash drive size, and so on.

How to transform from one unit to the other:

One character (say for example the letter 'a') = 1 bit

8 bits = 1 byte

Remember bistable devices? on or off, 0 or 1? Well a bit can be in one of two states! on or off, 0 or 1.

we can therefore store 2 8 bytes or 1024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte (KB)

1024 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)

1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte (TB)

CONVERTING BETWEEN UNITS:

Example 1: If we have 1 Kilobyte and want to know how many bits it contains:
1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes
and 1 Byte = 8 bits
Therefore

1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes

= 1024 X 8 bits
= 8192 bits

Example 2: We want to know how many bytes there is in 2 Megabyte::

1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes
1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes

SO!
1 Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes
AND

1024 Kilobytes = 1024 * 1024 Bytes = 1048576 Bytes

AND

1 Megabyte = 1024 Kilobytes

= 1,048,576 Bytes (1 KB) X 1024
= 1,073,741,824 Bytes
Therefore 2 Megabytes = 2 X 1073,741,824 Bytes
= 2,147,483,648 Bytes