It is an interesting coincidence that every tenth power of two is approximately equal to every third power of ten. This has resulted in two different definitions of these numbering systems. "kilobyte", "megabyte", "gigabyte", etc. can mean one of two different things depending on context. This situation can cause confusion, especially in respect to hard disk size measurements, where both measurements are often used.
| Name |
Abbr. |
Binary
Power |
Binary
Value |
Decimal
Power |
Decimal
Value |
| Kilobyte |
KB |
210 |
1,024 |
103 |
1,000 |
| Megabyte |
MB |
220 |
1,048,576 |
106 |
1,000,000 |
| Gigabyte |
GB |
230 |
1,073,741,824 |
109 |
1,000,000,000 |
| TeraByte |
TB |
240 |
1,099,511,627,776 |
1012 |
1,000,000,000,000 |
One megabyte is defined as 106 or one million bytes (1,000,000) and one gigabyte as 109 or one billion bytes (1,000,000,000).
This is the industry standard. All major disk drive manufacturers employ this definition.
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