How many Megabytes (GB) in a Gigabyte (GB) and Terabyte (TB)

Our technology has progressed very far in the last decade or so, and with so much memory space available. It is hard to really appreciate how much data capacity we have. Storage and memory jargon can be confusing, and it’s easy to confuse megabytes with gigabytes.

Smartphones today will have a small number of gigabytes in which to store apps, music, contacts, emails, messages, photos, videos and more. The hard drive in your PC or laptop will probably have hundreds of gigabytes.

Every major media has now gone digital, and as a result both companies and individuals are creating an increasing volume of data not just to initially store, but just as importantly to manage and back-up into a coherent archive. Indeed, in the film industry where the digital storage requirements for high-speed, random access archives can run into tens of terabytes on a major blockbuster. The job title of "data wrangler" has been born to signal the requirement for people to take on effective data management in order keep the production running effectively.

Gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB) are these days’ terms usually used in the world of computing to describe disk space, or data storage space, and system memory.

For instance, just a few years ago we were describing hard drive space using the term Megabytes. Today, Gigabytes is the most common term being used to describe the size of a hard drive. In the not so distant future, Terabyte will be a common term. But what are they?

Megabytes (GB), Gigabyte (GB) and Terabyte (TB)

Here’s everything you need to know about Megabytes, Gigabyte and Terabyte:

How many Megabytes (GB) in a Gigabyte (GB) and Terabyte (TB)

Megabyte (MB)

Megabytes often abbreviated as MB is measure of a computer's disk storage capacity or a computer file's size. A larger amount of megabytes increases a computer's ability to store and process more information.

A Megabyte is approximately 1,000 Kilobytes. In the early days of computing, a Megabyte was considered to be a large amount of data. These days with a 500 Gigabyte hard drive on a computer being common, a Megabyte doesn't seem like much anymore.

One of those old 3-1/2 inch floppy disks can hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a small book. 100 Megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 Megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CD-ROM disk.

Gigabyte (GB)

A Gigabyte is approximately 1,000 Megabytes. 1 Gigabyte could hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals. A Gigabyte is a very common term used these days when referring to disk space or drive storage. 1 Gigabyte of data is almost twice the amount of data that a CD-ROM can hold.

Terabyte (TB)

A Terabyte is approximately one trillion bytes, or 1,000 Gigabytes. To put it in some perspective, a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte images or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video. A Terabyte could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collection of the Library of Congress. That's a lot of data.

When referring to a megabyte for disk storage, the hard drive manufacturers use the standard that a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes. This means that when you buy an 250 Gigabyte Hard drive you will get a total of 250,000,000,000 bytes of available storage.

This is where it gets confusing because Windows uses the 1,048,576 byte rule so when you look at the Windows drive properties a 250 Gigabyte drive will only yield 232 Gigabytes of available storage space; a 750GB drive only shows 698GB and a One Terabyte hard drive will report a capacity of 931 Gigabytes. Anybody confused yet? With three accepted definitions, there will always be some confusion so I will try to simplify the definitions a little.