How Many Bytes In A Gigabyte [Everything You Need to Know]

Gigabyte, Megabyte or byte can be seen as just some random cool words, but these words have more significant value in this age.

From buying smartphones to computer storage devices, you see these words. But have you ever wondered about the meaning of the words? Ever questioned How many Bytes are in a Gigabyte?

If you are looking for the answers, my friend, you have come to the right place. In this post, I have provided all the information that will help you find answers to all your questions.

Let’s Find out!

What Is A Byte?

A Byte is a unit of digital data information consisting of memory data equal to 8 (eight) bits, It was created to represent the number of bits used for a letter, number or typographic symbol to exist. For example, the letter W is one byte or eight bits.

You may ask, what is a bit?

Let me explain,

In a digital storage system, everything is stored with a binary system, Binary means there are two values, 0 and 1, but it is also represented by yes/no, switch on/off or true/false. And a bit is the smallest unit of storage. A bit stores a 0’s & 1’s.

Now back to, What is a Byte? A Byte is a group of 8 bits, or One byte is precisely equivalent to eight bits from 0-7.

What Is Gigabyte And How Is It Measured?

A Gigabyte is a unit of digital computer or information media storage capacity of more than a thousand megabytes. The word Giga came from the Greek word γίγας (ghìgas), which means giant. Giga is equivalent to 10^9 in the International System of Units (SI).

For digital data storage, most of us know that a Gigabyte is one thousand Megabytes, Which is exactly not true.

A Gigabyte is equivalent to 1024 Megabytes. You see, the confusion occurred because of the Kilobytes.

People started to mess up the digital storage system by trying to over-simplify. It happened because, by the SI or International System of Units, most of us refer to a Kilo as thousands; for example, A Kilometer means 1000 meters, and A Kilogram means 1000 grams.

Although, This rule does not apply to the digital storage system, and it is a common misconception made by everyone.

How Many Bytes In A Gigabyte

So the correct answer to your question is that A Gigabytes stands for (2^10 = 1024) Megabytes. Or 1024^3 bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes.

You have heard at some point in your life that, A Gigabyte means a thousand megabytes, million kilobytes or a billion bytes.

But none of them are true. Mathematically, the values of these numbers are not in round figures as people used to say.

Instead, these values are approximately equal to but not equal numbers.

People can say It’s tomato or tomato, but they can’t change the Mathematical answer. With simple math, we can get the 100% correct answer.

Confused? Read the next section; in it, you will learn more about the terminology of digital data storage.

Terminology Of Digital Data Storage

To understand every misconception, you will have to learn more about how digital storage management works.

Computer and digital systems use binary methods to store, process and transfer data. In the Binary system, there are two values, zeros and ones. True or false, On or Off, Yes or No.

Bit – Pair of zero(s), and one(s) is called a bit. This is the smallest unit of computer data.

Computer technology mathematically expresses using 2^n.

Byte – A group consisting of a total of (2^3 = 8) bits is called a Byte (A single alphabetic letter, number, or any kind of symbol in a text file takes one Byte in storage). A byte is the basic unit of memory.

This means that if you wrote an email with 400 words, that text file without the metadata would be 400 bytes. And it will take 400-byte space in your storage device.

Kilobytes – A Kilobyte stands with (2^10 = 1024) bytes. This means to make one Kilobyte, you will need 1024 bytes. And, If you compare it with an email, you will have to write an email containing 1024 words.

Megabytes – A Megabyte stands for (2^10 = 1024) Kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes. Megabytes also know to many that a megabyte equals a million bytes. But if you observe the numbers, it is more than a million.

A megabyte can fit in a digital image with 10 million pixels, a one-minute length audio song in MP3 audio file format, and a 100-page book in pdf format.

Gigabytes – It is one thousand and twenty-four megabytes, and Gigabytes stands for (2^10 = 1024) Megabytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes. Which is not a billion bytes. There are more than 73,700,800 bytes left.

And from here, this list goes to Terabytes, Petabytes, Exabytes, Zettabytes, and so on.

Here’s A Table That Will Help To See The Bigger Picture Of Digital Storage Capacity:

How Much Data Can Store in 1 Gigabyte?

The Word Gigabyte is used to explain the storage capacity for modern-day storage devices.

Almost every electronic storage manufacturer uses Gigabyte to indicate memory devices, Such as; RAM, SSD, HDD, Flash Drive and many more.

Here Are Some Examples, How Much Data Can be Store In 1 Gigabyte:

• 1 650 MB CD.
• 256 MP3 audio files (with 4 MB average file size).
• 341 digital pictures (with 3 MB average file size).
• 353 one-minute YouTube videos.
• 640 web pages (with 1.6 MB average file size).
• 3,333 average emails with standard-sized attachments.
• 4,473 books (200 pages or 240,000 characters).
• 6,180 sent and received emails.
• 50,000 average emails with no attachments.
• 894,784 pages of plain text (1,200 characters).
• 900,000 text pages.

I hope you have understood how capable a gigabyte is in size.

Are There Bigger Units?

Yes, there are bigger units than Gigabytes and Terabytes. In spite of Gigabyte & Terabytes, which are the most common and well-known calculating units in the market. Terabytes have 1024 times more than Gigabytes. And the biggest storage capacity unit is called Yottabyte.

Yottabyte is trillion Terabytes or one septillion bytes. It is the largest storage unit acknowledged by the International System of Units (SI). Yottabyte equals 10^24 = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 there are a total 24 zeros behind the 1.

The size is so big that normal examples can turn pale in comparison; 1 Yottabyte is 1 Quadrillion gigabytes.

In 2018, the IDC Datasphere’s report estimated that the total amount of data created, captured and replicated in the world was 33 Zettabytes, and that’s only 3% of Yottabytes

To record a Yottabyte of data, every human that ever lived on the planet earth would have to steam a movie in HD quality for a year and 24×7.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1: How many bytes are 1 GB and MB?

There are a total of 1,048,576 bytes in 1 Megabyte and 1,073,741,824 bytes in Gigabyte. 

Question 2: Why is a byte 255 and not 256?

A byte is not 255 or 256 it’s the middle of those two numbers. A byte means a set of a total of 8-bits together. There are 256 values between 0 and 255, which can be encoded in 8 bits or a byte.

Question 3: What is the biggest byte?

A yottabyte is the biggest byte unit acknowledged as a standard size by the International System of Units (SI).

Question 4: What are the 8 types of bytes?

The following 8 types of bytes are; a) Bit, b) Nibble, c) Byte, Kilobyte, d) Megabyte, f)

Gigabyte, g) Terabyte, and h) Petabyte.

Final Thought

Now you know everything about digital storage capacity, their names, and the amount can a single Gigabyte can store.

It is essential to know about storage sizes and their names to decide how much you will need in the future to save your data.

In my post, I have explained How Many Bytes are In A Gigabyte and provided some more insights  about how storage capacity is measured in the most straightforward way, which will come to your aid in one way or another.

Thank you for reading the post, and don’t forget to  tell me which byte size you want to be available in the market.