Bytes to Terabytes: What Each Size Actually Holds

Two conventions

• Decimal (SI): 1 KB = 1,000 bytes
• Binary (IEC): 1 KiB = 1,024 bytes

Marketing uses SI. Operating systems often use binary but label it KB anyway — that's why a "1 TB" hard drive shows as 931 GB in your OS.

What fits where

• 1 MB ≈ a short novel in plain text
• 100 MB ≈ 30 minutes of MP3
• 5 GB ≈ a 1080p movie
• 1 TB ≈ 300,000 photos from a phone

Cloud costs scale with this

Understanding the unit is the first step to controlling the bill.