GB vs GiB

GB vs GiB describes two units for data size. A gigabyte (GB) is 10^9 bytes, while a gibibyte (GiB) is 2^30 bytes, about 7.4 percent larger.

Why it matters

Storage manufacturers use decimal units, while some operating systems report binary quantities, sometimes still labeled GB. This is why a 500 GB drive appears smaller in your system.

The prefixes follow the same pattern: KB/KiB, MB/MiB, TB/TiB, with the gap widening at each step.

Example

1 GB  = 1,000,000,000 bytes
1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes

500 GB drive = 500,000,000,000 bytes
             = 465.66 GiB

Nothing is missing from the drive. The same number of bytes is simply expressed in a different unit.

Common misconceptions

• The manufacturer is lying about capacity. They use the decimal standard.
• Formatting always eats the difference. Filesystem overhead is small compared with the unit gap.
• KB and KiB are interchangeable. They differ by 2.4 percent, and by about 10 percent at TB scale.

Related

• Mbps vs MBps
• SSD
• HDD

यह पेज सामान्य जानकारी है, जिसे हमारी संपादकीय टीम ने लिखा है और दस्तावेज़ीकरण बदलने पर अपडेट किया जाता है। सर्वर और प्रदाता अलग-अलग होते हैं, इसलिए बदलाव पहले सुरक्षित तरीके से जाँचें। देखें: संपादकीय नीति और अस्वीकरण.