Whats a Byte or a Bit, Whats a Kilobyte or a Megabyte, Gigabyte or Terabyte

These are common terms we hear much of the time, but for many of us these terms can be quite alien, read on for a quick explanation of them all

Computer memory be it hard disk or ram is measured in Bytes, this can range from a single character up to billions.

We’ll start at the smallest measurement and work our way up

Bit
A bit is the smallest amount of memory a computer can handle, it’s a single binary character or either a 1 or 0



Byte
A bye is a group of 8 bits each of these can hold a 1 or a 0 for example 00000000 or 00000001 which gives us a possible a possible 256 different values

Whats a Kilobyte
Kilo as the name suggests means a thousand, accurately speaking though it’s actually 1024 bytes which make up a kilobyte, simply meaning a kilobyte is a thousand bytes give or take 24.

Megabyte
Mega = million, so this is a million bytes or a 1024 kilobytes

Gigabyte
Giga = billion, this means a billion bytes, 1024 megabytes or a million kilobytes

Terabyte
Tera = trillion, this means a trillion bytes, 1024 gigabytes, a million megabytes, or a billion kilobytes

It’s incredible to think that computers running DOS (Disk Operating System) around 20 years ago only had an operating RAM of 64k.

Even if we go back less than 5 years, most computers only had 256mb of ram and a 20gb hard drive was considered plenty.

It’s amazing when we think today the average spec of a computer is currently around an 80gb hard drive and 2gb of ram, and sometimes even that is not enough.

It’s not often that something actually goes down in price over the years, but hard drives, ram & even total computers cost a fraction of the prices of the eighties and nineties.

When we look at paying £90 for a terabyte hard drive, it makes a 10gb hard drive in the 1980’s which cost around £250 look ridiculously expensive.

Whats a byte Find out if you need to increase the memory in your computer

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