A gigabyte (GB) is a unit of digital storage equal to 1,024 megabytes (MB) or approximately 1 billion bytes. It is a standard measurement used across operating systems, storage devices, and cloud platforms to represent capacity and file size.
Gigabytes are commonly used to describe the size of applications, operating systems, high-resolution media, and storage space. For example, a 4K movie can be 10–20 GB, and smartphones today often come with 64 GB to 512 GB of internal storage.
In both hardware and networking, gigabytes serve as a reference point for system requirements, file transfers, and usage limits. Whether you're managing a cloud backup, downloading large files, or installing software, understanding gigabytes helps gauge how much space or bandwidth is needed.
A kilobyte (KB) is a unit of digital information equal to 1,024 bytes. It's one of the first multiples of a byte used to describe data size in computing, often associated with small files such as plain text documents or configuration files.
In modern systems, kilobytes are considered relatively small. However, they remain relevant in areas like embedded devices, metadata, cache storage, and data transmission, where efficiency and compact file sizes matter.
While many users may be more familiar with megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB), understanding kilobytes provides a useful reference point — especially when optimizing data usage or analyzing low-level system operations. It's a reminder that even the smallest units contribute to the performance and structure of today's digital ecosystems.
SI (Base 10):
Formula: Kilobyte = Gigabyte ÷ "Number of Gigabytes in 1 Kilobyte"
Calculation: 100 × 1000000 = 100000000 Kilobyte
Binary (Base 2):
Formula: Kilobyte = Gigabyte ÷ "Number of Gigabytes in 1 Kilobyte"
Calculation: 100 × 1048576 = 104857600 Kilobyte
| Gigabyte | Kilobyte (Binary) | Kilobyte (SI) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| 2 | 2,097,152 | 2,000,000 |
| 3 | 3,145,728 | 3,000,000 |
| 4 | 4,194,304 | 4,000,000 |
| 5 | 5,242,880 | 5,000,000 |
| 6 | 6,291,456 | 6,000,000 |
| 7 | 7,340,032 | 7,000,000 |
| 8 | 8,388,608 | 8,000,000 |
| 9 | 9,437,184 | 9,000,000 |
| 10 | 10,485,760 | 10,000,000 |
| 11 | 11,534,336 | 11,000,000 |
| 12 | 12,582,912 | 12,000,000 |
| 13 | 13,631,488 | 13,000,000 |
| 14 | 14,680,064 | 14,000,000 |
| 15 | 15,728,640 | 15,000,000 |