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This is the boring stuff. I apologize, because there’s no way to make this stuff interesting. But it’s necessary. You have to have an idea about the size of your files, graphics, videos, MP3 and others and also the size of the drives and other peripherals required to handle them most efficiently. Whether it’s the amount of RAM on your main board, your hard drive, DVD burner, flash drive or network backup drive, they’re all expressed in the measurements which follow. So, like it or not, you have to have at least a relative understanding of bits and bytes:
A bit (short for BInary digiT) is the smallest unit of data in a computer. A bit has a single binary value, either 0 or 1. (Binary means that there are only two choices.) With respect to the physical storage of bits on a computer’s hard disk drive, the binary value reflects whether the bit is on (magnetic) or off (not magnetic). Think of it like this: if you wrap lots of copper wire around a rod, then connect each end of the wire to the two poles of a battery, the rod will be magnetized and pick up iron. When you take one of the wires off of the battery, it’s no longer a magnet. You’ve turned it on and then off. There are only those two choices. That’s binary system (bi = two), and it also demonstrates the relationship between electricity and magnetism, a recurring computer principle.
A byte is composed of 8 bits. Similar to the bit, the value of a byte is stored on the hard drive as either above or below a designated level of electrical (therefore magnetic) charge in a single capacitor. Half a byte (4 bits) is called a nybble. [Sometimes, the term octet is used for an 8 bit unit instead of a byte.] Also, in many systems, 4 8-bit bytes form a 32 bit word (and sometimes a half-word 16 bits long)]. A kilobyte is 1024 bytes (Why 1024? Computers count in twos, so 1024 is the closest power of 2 to 1000 (2 to 10th power)) - Click HERE for more information about this; A megabyte is approximately 1 million bytes (1,024 kilobytes; 1,048,576 bytes); A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes (1024 megabytes, 1,048,576 kilobytes, 1,073,741,824 bytes); and a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes. A petabyte is 1024 terabytes. An exabyte is 1024 petabytes. A zetabyte is 1024 exabytes. The largest unit of measurement for computer data is the yottabyte, which is 1024 zetabytes.
[To make matters even more confusing, there is terminology distinguishing the above approximations with the exact unit measurements. For example, a a Pebibyte is exactly 2 to the 50th power, or 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes and a Mebibyte is exactly 2 to the 20th power, or 1,048,576 bytes. A mebibyte is 1024 Kibibytes and precedes the Gibibyte as a unit of data storage measurement. [These exact measurements were introduced by the International Electrotechnical Commission (“IEC”) back in 1998 for instances where exact data measurement is required.]
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