It is so wonderful that in the realm of technology where everything, even us all, exists in the terms of data. In fact, the whole internet that we all are so fond of, it’s just a network where data flows from one place to another.
So, have you ever thought of what data is actually, and how it works or gets stored? Well, we would be so happy to share the information and explain the basics of data in this article with you, so if you are curious about it, you can follow along and find your answers.
How Many Bytes Are in a Gigabyte?
As we speak of data, you all must have heard about terms such as bytes, gigabytes, megabytes, etc. Well, all these terms are used to determine the amount of data, and they are all correlated to each other.
Starting with the smallest term, byte, around 1000s of bytes combine together to make a Kilobyte. Similarly, roughly 1000s of Kilobytes combine to make a Megabyte, and in the same manner, the upcoming in the line is a Gigabyte, which is roughly a collection of around 1000 Megabytes. Well, saying 1 Gigabyte equals 1000 Megabytes won’t be completely right, as when it comes to data, things are a little bit more complex than you might be assuming.
For that, you will need to understand the data storage terminology first which will clear out most of your doubts and will help you to learn about data more precisely.
Digital Storage Terminology
When we look at other terminologies, for instance, distance or weight, a thousand meters, and a thousand grams are simply called kilometer and kilogram respectively. However, that’s not the case when it comes to data. Computers do communicate, but not like us, humans, their language is way more complex and different from what we use!
For all the tasks such as saving files, and processing any tasks, all the information and commands are shared on computers in Binary language. And, you will be surprised to know that binary language is just all about Zeroes and Ones. In computer language, One simply stands for a Yes, or True, while the Zeroes stand for a No, or False.
For instance, we have the alphabet in the English language, and there are 26 of them. The binary language, on the other hand, has just two of them, which can also be called bits. Thus, to communicate, you can’t just use one alphabet alone and tell your story, you would have to make a group of them in a meaningful manner, right? That said, alphabets form words and thereafter, sentences are formed by grouping the words.
In a similar manner, the binary language forms a collection of 8 bits in a meaningful manner which we call a Byte.
From this, you can simply understand that a Byte is a collection of 8 bits.
So, the question that arises is, do 1000 Bytes form a Kilobyte? Or, do 1000 Megabytes form a Gigabyte? The answer is No. So, how many bytes are there in a Gigabyte exactly? Let’s understand!
How Many Bytes Are in a Gigabyte, Exactly?
So, as we are trying to understand the binary language, firstly you need to know that there are only two bits involved, which are 0 and 1. So, if we try to use them and make a meaningful command for your computer to understand, assuming one command requires a single bit, the total possible values for it can be two, 0, or 1.
Similarly, if two bits are put together, the total possible combinations are 4 (0,1; 1,0; 1,1; 0,0) which can also be referred to as 2^2 = 4.
In this similar manner, if three bits are used, there will be 2^3 possible combinations which is equal to 8.
Following this, you can understand that it all proceeds in the manner of 2^x. So, when it comes to making terminologies, like a kilometer or a kilogram, something has to be found near 1000. However, using the 2^x method, the closest you can get to 1000 is 2^10, which equals 1024.
From all this, you can say that 1024 bytes make a kilobyte, not 1000 only. And, as we move up the ladder, 1024 kilobytes make a megabyte and 1024 megabytes make a Gigabyte.
To be more specific about it, a single Gigabyte consists of 1024 megabytes, 1048576 Kilobytes, and a total of 1073741824 bytes.
What’s Wrong with This Estimation?
What’s wrong with this estimation is that it does not go well with the standard international (S.I) methods of measuring units. While almost all the estimations are made using the power of 10 rule, as 1000 meters (10^10) make a kilometer. Hence, that rule doesn’t work well when it comes to data, where 2^10 is accurate.
For instance, you must have noticed that a storage drive labeled 500 gigabytes, only offers about 466 GB of storage space. So, why is that? It is because these storage devices are assumed to be offering 500000000000 bytes in total, according to the SI system.
However, in reality, if you divide 500000000000 bytes by 1024, you will get 488281250 Kilobytes. Furthermore, if we keep on dividing it by 1024, we will eventually get to 466GB which is the real storage amount that you will get on a storage drive labeled as 500 GB.
So, it is possible for a person to feel cheated if he/she doesn’t have this piece of knowledge about data.
How Much Data Is One Gigabyte?
Well, so far, we are pretty sure about how many bytes are there in a Gigabyte, that’s the theoretical part. But, when it comes to practicality, how useful is one gigabyte of storage?
In a storage drive of about 1 GB, you can roughly store:
- Around 1 million text files.
- Around 250 audio files.
- Around 500 photographs of high resolution.
- About 5 minutes of video length in 4K quality.
How About Bigger Units?
We have pretty much-discussed data in terms of bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes till now. But, do you know there are even more units, even bigger units which you can use to count or measure the amount of data?
Gigabytes is what you will come around and hear normally as it’s most commonly used. However, if we talk about storage devices, storage hard drives are available in the market which offer data storage capacities in terabytes, which is basically 1024 gigabytes.
Apart from that, if you are curious to know further, there are bigger storage units like Petabytes, and Exabytes. Well, if you wonder whether these bigger units are being used or not, companies like Facebook, YouTube, and other popular names, whichever comes to mind, are dealing with data in Petabytes.
The story just doesn’t end here, if we count the amount of data being processed on the internet, in about just one hour, it will easily reach Exabytes. In fact, there are even bigger units such as Zettabytes and Yottabytes.
Conclusion
That is all about data from our side. We hope if you had any doubts earlier, they are pretty much clear by now. Understanding data is definitely interesting as it works quite uniquely and does not match the other conventional terminology methods. We have often seen people being confused even between bits and bytes too. Although, we don’t assume any of our readers would have such doubts anymore. If there’s any other valuable information that you want to add from your side, feel free to share it in the comments section below.
