Computer Skills Course: Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes
Computer Skills Course: Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes
Free Computer Skills Course: Digital Storage Terminology.
Learn about Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes (KB), Megabytes (MB), Gigabytes (GB), Terabytes (TB).
Transcript:
Let’s continue learning about how computers store data. As we learned earlier, computers use the Binary number system, which has only two numbers, one and zero.
The word that’s used to describe these binary digits, which can be either one or zero, is Bit – B-I-T = It’s short for ‘binary digit’ and it is the smallest unit of data in a computer.
Now, these Bits – these ones and zeroes – are used to store all kinds of information, from the text that appears on your screen, to the colors of an image, to the sounds that come out of your speakers. To store information like this, we use a bunch of bits together. The number of bits we have determines how much information we can store.
Now for our next term: It turns out, if you take 8 of these bits – 8 of these ones and zeroes – and put them together, that’s called a Byte. Sounds like a mouthful of food, but it’s spelled with a ‘y’ and it refers to 8 bits put together. In everyday terms, you can think of one byte as the amount of space it takes to store one single letter or symbol in a text document. If you wrote a short story with 1000 words, this would take up 1000 bytes of storage space.
That brings us to our next term. If you take 1000 bytes and put them together, that’s called a Kilobyte, often abbreviated as “kb”. Now, I will mention just once, that technically there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, and that’s because computers use binary and everything comes in powers of two. That said, it doesn’t really matter, it’s ok to think of a kilobyte simply as 1000 bytes, similar to how a kilometer is 1000 meters. One Kilobyte is enough space to hold about two pages of text. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the 5.25” floppy disk was a popular storage option, and it could hold 360kb of information.
So now, what’s it called if you have 1000 kilobytes? It’s called a Megabyte, often abbreviated as capital “MB”. One megabyte is enough space to hold about 5 books, or one photo, or one minute of music. Back in the 1980s, we had these things called floppy disks. This was a 3.5” floppy disk that held 1.44MB of data, which was pretty good at the time, because most files were pretty small.
Alright, now you’re probably wondering, what’s it called if you have 1000 megabytes? 1000 megabytes is called a Gigabyte, and it’s enough space to hold about 400 books, or a thousand pictures, or 16 hours of music. By the mid 1990s, you could buy a 1GB hard drive for a couple hundred bucks. Today, you can buy 1 GB flash drive for about $5.
Ok, so what’s it called when you have 1000 gigabytes? 1000 gigabytes is called a Terabyte, and is often abbreviated as “TB”, and it’s enough space to hold about 400,000 large books (that’s about 30 school libraries), a million pictures, or two years of continuous music. Today, you can buy a 1TB hard drive for under $50. Yes, it’s pretty amazing.
So, to recap, we talked about Bits, how there are 8 bits in 1 byte, how there are 1000 bytes in 1 kilobyte, and 1000 kilobytes in 1 megabyte, and 1000 megabytes in 1 gigabyte, and 1000 gigabytes in 1 terabyte. I hope you’ve enjoyed this video and that you have a better understanding of digital storage terminology.
Nice Video
How about a pettabyte?
THANK YOU!
Thx i did pass my test👊🏻
I’m stuck on the "1024" how do I work that out??
thanks alot!
Well done. I watched this with my son.
thanks you helpped me with my homework
Thank you so much!
This helps me a lot!
At 1:15 you say that a 1000 words would use around 1000 bytes of storage space. This is incorrect. It should be a 1000 characters use around 1000 bytes. Great video, my young son is very interested in this.
soooo, does that mean that there are 8 quadrillion bits in a tb?
Beautiful
Very good explanation. Thank you.🙂☘🌲
Thank you sir
Thank you so much very good explanation!!!
I think at the beginning of the video what you said it would be 1000 letters instead of 1000 words.
What about teraflop? The Xbox Scorpio could hold 2
Thank you that was really useful
Great explanation
great video but what about PB
excellent videos bro. keep doing em
Whoa 1 TB = 2Years Of Continuous Music.
That’s A Lot Of MUSIC
Thanks a bunch
Thank you, Dane! I’ve learned something today. Great video!
Best explaination thanks
Plz clear my doubt that…How are you equaling/comparing the size(kB,MB…)with books.For eg..You said 1GB is enough for storing about 400 books WHEREAS 400 books can be stored in almost some KBs nowadays in pdf format or in .txt……………So why you said 1GB = almost 400 BOOks
Very informative and clear explanation
amazingly explained
you forgot exabyte, and zettabyte
what a nice informative video. it is just great sir !!
very useful video…. thank you sr
I get it now 🙂
What comes before Bit?
what comes after TB? PB?
where is petabyte.
A single byte can be a single character. The comparison of: a short story of 1000 words require 1000 bytes (1kb), is really inaccurate unless it’s a thousand one letter words and punctuation. But that wouldn’t make for a good story.
Brilliant
what is is it called if you have 1024 terabyte?
thank-you Dane. it really helped😀
thanx i learned so easily
I really like the video and it’s helpful. But I have questions what app did u use for the video please answer
OK , how much room do I need to keep window 7 and all when I cone my hard drive to a terabyte ??? in other ware how much space do I need to keep ??
How is it that 1 MB can hold 5 BOOKS and 1 PHOTO but a GB can hold more photos than books, isn’t that the other way around?
1:15 thousand letters not words
Hi Dane
Can you correct me on something, you say 1 byte is enough space for single letter or symbol, but then you say thousand words requires thousand bytes. Did you mean to say letters instead of words?
1 kilobyte (KB) is actually 1000 bytes exactly, there is a common confusion about this. kilo, mega, giga etc. is always a power of 10. For power of 2 we use kibi, mebi, gibi. For example 1 kibibyte (KiB) = 1024 bytes. Part of the reason why there is a confusion about this is that Windows operating system uses wrong terms that does not comply with ISO standards. On Linux and if I remember correctly Mac OS X there is a difference between KB and KiB and they are calculated correctly. That is why a 8GB flash drive is "7.45GB" on Windows and 8GB everywhere else.
So therefore if I had a music thing that lasted for 1024 minutes that home thing would be a gigabyte
A thousand words would require much more than a thousand bytes as each word is several letters long…
I guess you can say this video was very byte sized.
HA!
Ha
ha
heh…
1 byte equals 1 single letter. If you wrote 1 thousand words you’d have 1 thousand bytes?… that doesn’t make sense. 1:08