Digital Storage Converter

KB vs. KiB: What is the difference and why does it matter?

Have you ever bought a 1 Terabyte (1 TB) external hard drive, plugged it into your Windows PC, and felt cheated when Windows reported only 931 GB of space?

You weren't scammed. It is a conflict of standard definitions:

• Decimal Standard (Base 10): Hardware manufacturers (like Seagate, Western Digital, and Apple) define storage using decimal standards. Under this definition, 1 Kilobyte is exactly 1,000 bytes, 1 Megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, and 1 Gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. It aligns with the metric system prefix rule.
• Binary Standard (Base 2): Operating systems (like Microsoft Windows) historically measure memory capacity using binary standards because computer circuits operate on 0s and 1s. Under this, 1 Kilobyte is 1,024 bytes (2^10), 1 Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes (2^20), and 1 Gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30).

To clear up this confusion, the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) introduced the binary prefixes: Kibibyte (KiB = 1024), Mebibyte (MiB = 1,048,576), Gibibyte (GiB), and Tebibyte (TiB). While macOS and Linux have updated their file systems to display metric decimal standards, Windows still uses binary measurements but calls them "KB" and "GB".

Standard conversion table references

This digital storage converter lets you easily switch between both systems. Just use the toggle buttons at the top to switch calculations instantly from Base 2 (1024) to Base 10 (1000) and compare the difference.