In Tuesday's article on What Size Flash Drive You Need, we discussed the different sizes a digital file could be and what their average is. Some files were measured in KB (kilobytes) while others were in MB (megabytes) and still otheres were in GB (gigabtes). This digital capacity measuring system can seem intimidating at first, but once the basics are understood, it's quite simple.
If you're already familiar with the metric system, you have a head start as that is where the prefixes for these measurements comes from. For example,
kilometer and
kilobyte. The metric system does things in multiples of 100's, but for technology, you'll see it used in multiples of 1,000. Brain hurt yet? Here's a simple breakdown:
- Kilobyte- 1,000 bytes
- Megabyte- 1,000 kilobytes
- Gigabyte- 1,000 megabytes
There are measurements above and below the three measurements given there, but these three will be the ones you primarily see in computers and technology today. Think you've got it? Here's where things get a bit messy; These measurements are really metric and aren't really multiples of 1,000. If you're familiar with how computers work on a basic level and use binary (click
here if you aren't) you know you know that they count by 8's, this is called a byte, and therefor instead of a kilobyte being 1,000 bytes, it's actually 1,024 bytes. Will you need to know this? Not unless you want to show off, but it's still good to know and there
are nerds out there that will correct you on it.
Practical Tip of the Day:
The 1000 vs 1024 difference doesn't make much an impact on a small scale, but as you start storing more and more data, the impact becomes more and more pronounced. Check out
this helpful chart from Wikipedia for a quick reference.
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