In this digital age that we live in, where everyone has a smartphone and/or computer of their own, it’s hard to escape the concept of file sizes. That game you want to download, or that piece of software you need desperately – one of the first things you end up checking is how large it is in terms of KB, MB, or GB. After all, the average file size of mobile games essentially doubled for just five years.
Not only do these file sizes inform how much space will be taken up on your device. But it will also influence how long it might take to download or send to another person. This is why it’s good to understand the basics of storage these days. There’s pretty much no escaping it!
There are phones these days with 1TB of storage, but did you know that the very first hard drive could only store 5MB and was made all the way back in 1956? Let’s not talk about how it was nearly as heavy as a compact car. It’s shocking that the largest drive available now is 100TB – an astonishing 21,000,000 times larger than the pioneer hard drive!
But I know what you’re probably asking? How large is an MB? What does it stand for? How about KB, GB, or even TB? How many KB in a GB? These terms can be confusing when you don’t know where to start. I’m going to break down the basics of file storage and the units used. So if you’re looking for the answer to how many kilobytes make a megabyte, there’s no better article to be reading.
Do you have a particular question about Kb and Gb comparison? Then use the table of contents below to jump to the most relevant section. And you can always go back by clicking on the black arrow in the right bottom corner of the page. Also, please note that some of the links in this article may be affiliate links. For more details, check the Disclosure section at the bottom of the page.
Here's what we'll cover:
What does KB stand for?
In computer talk, KB stands for kilobytes. This is perhaps the smallest file size unit that you’ll come across in your day-to-day work on your computer. There is one unit smaller than it – bytes. But you’ll probably only see files that are measured in bytes every once in a while because they tend to be too small to actually do anything useful.
What does KB mean in storage?
So, now that you know that KB stands for kilobytes, it’s time for you to understand exactly what that means in storage terms. First of all, you should know that a single kilobyte contains 1,024 bytes. 1,024 is a significant number for file units, so you should keep it in mind.
It is better to give you a more practical idea of how large a couple of kilobytes is. A single page of pure text in a Microsoft Word file will be around or less than 20KB.
KB is most relevant when talking about document or text files, such as certain kinds of image files. E.g., memes you download off the internet and very small applications or utilities for simple tasks. Short audio clips can also be measured in KB, particularly depending on the quality.
What does MB mean?
MB stands for megabytes, which is the next step up from KB. I can hear you asking: how many kilobytes make a megabyte? Can you guess how many there are? If you’ve been paying attention, you might think 1,024, and if you did, you’re absolutely correct. So, if you’re looking for the answer to which is bigger, MB or KB, the answer is MB.
What does MB mean in storage?
I’m enjoying painting examples for you, so let’s start with pictures to talk about how large a few MB are. Do you like taking photos on your smartphone? If you’re using one made in the last couple of years, each image file your camera produces is likely to be anywhere from 2MB to 5MB.
A full music track in good quality will also be anywhere between 3MB to 6MB, depending on the length. Many computer applications will find themselves in the range of 100s of MB. However, it is not uncommon that many will be double digits.
Minor updates for your smartphone and most (but not all!) of the applications and games that you download for them are measured in MB as well.
Is KB bigger than MB?
Which is bigger MB or KB? The answer to this is MB, by quite a margin. A single megabyte is over 1,000 times larger than a single kilobyte. To be precise, to convert a kilobyte to a megabyte, you’d need 1,024 of them in total!
What does GB stand for?
GB, or gigabyte, is the largest file size unit that you’re likely to encounter in regular use of a computer or smartphone. While a TB, or terabyte, is larger, you’ll only see that unit when it comes to storage space or a collection of files, and not a single file.
As you must have guessed, there are 1,024 MB in a single GB, which makes it a pretty big unit on its own. Feature-length movies in Full HD will be measured in a couple of GBs, as will larger mobile games.
Large applications like Adobe Photoshop and operating systems will be measured in several gigabytes, but modern games take the cake. It is far from uncommon to see games these days that crack into the hundreds of GB.
How many KB in a GB?
There are 1,024MB in a GB and 1,024KB in each of those megabytes. So, to answer this question, we just have to do some quick math and multiply 1,024 by 1,024.
That comes to 1,048,576. That means there are that many kilobytes in a single gigabyte!
Credits: Thanks for the photo to Canva.
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