About the Bytes Converter
Storage sizes are quoted in two different systems, and mixing them up is the single most common cause of a number that looks wrong. Decimal units step by 1000, giving kilobyte, megabyte and gigabyte, while binary units step by 1024, giving kibibyte, mebibyte and gibibyte. Drive makers use the decimal set and most operating systems report the binary set, which is why a 1 TB disk shows up as roughly 931 GiB.
This converter keeps both families available and lets you cross between them, so 1048576 bytes can be read as 1 MiB or as 1.048576 MB and the source of the discrepancy becomes obvious. Bits are included at one eighth of a byte, which helps when a bandwidth figure arrives in megabits and a file size in megabytes.
Type one figure per line to work through a column of log sizes or quota values in a single pass. The output repeats the exact multiplier that was used and prints a table of powers of two, so a rough figure is quick to confirm. When you want a raw byte count written as a readable sentence rather than another unit, the Number Format tool is a better fit.
How to use
- Paste the byte counts, one per line.
- Choose the source unit and the target unit.
- Watch whether you are crossing between decimal and binary multiples.
- Copy the converted sizes.
Common questions
- Is a kilobyte 1000 or 1024 bytes?
- Strictly it is 1000 bytes. The 1024 byte unit has its own name, the kibibyte, written KiB.
- Why does my 500 GB drive show as 465 GB?
- The drive holds 500 decimal gigabytes and the operating system is displaying 465 gibibytes. The byte count is identical, only the unit label differs.
- Can I convert megabits to megabytes?
- Yes. Pick bit as the source unit and megabyte as the target, then enter the value in bits.
- How large a number can it take?
- Values up to about nine quadrillion bytes stay exact. Beyond that the result switches to scientific notation.