The bits are the smallest storage unit. It can only get one value, either 0 or 1. Anything with two different states can store 1 bit. In computers, all information is stored and transferred as 0 and 1.
One byte consists of 8 bits (e.g. 00100011). A byte can store one character, e.g. ‘A’ or ‘x’ or ‘$’. Also the bytes are used to describe the storage capacity of a storage medium such as a hard disk etc.
To describe large byte numbers we use some other names (which are essentially 210 patterns, since one bit can only get 2 values). Therefore:
- 1 Kilobyte (KB) = 1024 bytes = 210 bytes
- 1 Megabyte (MB) = 1024 Kilobytes
- 1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1024 Megabytes
- 1 Terabyte (TB) = 1024 Gigabytes
- 1 Petabyte (PB) = 1024 Terabytes
- 1 Exabyte (EB) = 1024 Petabytes
- 1 Zettabyte (ZB) = 1024 Exabytes
- 1 Yottabyte (YB) = 1024 Zettabytes