I often get asked what is a megabyte, etc…

So I added a link to the right called measurements that will take you to a nice list of a whole bunch of computer related measurments.

http://www.wu.ece.ufl.edu/links/dataRate/DataMeasurementChart.html

see also….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_information

How do they relate?

  • 1 bit – answer to an yes/no question
  • 1 byte – a number from 0 to 255.
  • 90 bytes: enough to store a typical line of text from a book.
  • 512 bytes = ½ KiB: the typical sector of a hard disk.
  • 1024 bytes = 1 KiB: the classical block size in UNIX filesystems.
  • 2048 bytes = 2 KiB: a CD-ROM sector.
  • 4096 bytes = 4 KiB: a memory page in x86 (since Intel 80386).
  • 4 kB: about one page of text from a novel.
  • 120 kB: the text of a typical pocket book.
  • 1 MB – a 1024×1024 pixel bitmap image with 256 colors (8 bpp color depth).
  • 3 MB – a three minute song (128k bitrate)
  • 650-900 MB – an CD-ROM
  • 1 GB – 114 minutes of uncompressed CD-quality audio at 1.4 Mbit/s
  • 15 GB – number of bytes Google offers you for free.
  • 8/16 GB – size of a normal flash drive
  • 4 TB – The size of a $300 hard disk
  • 966 EB – prediction of the volume of the whole internet in 2015