The Difference Between MiB and MB

For those of you who don't  know, and admittedly until 5 minutes ago I had no clue myself, there is a slight but somewhat important difference between Megabytes (MB) and Mebibytes (MiB).   To make it even more interesting, the same distinction exists between Kilobytes (KB) and Kibibytes (KiB). The mathematical explanation is simple: MiB = Mebibyte = 1024 KiB KiB = Kibibyte = 1024 Bytes MB = Megabyte = 1,000 KB KB = Kilobyte = 1,000 Bytes A chart of the standard and the differences between power-of-2 and power-of-10 prefixes is noted on the NIST website. While that may not seem like a big difference, it starts to add up QUICKLY when you start talking about today's data storage capacities.   This often makes for interesting comparisons in storage capacities or files sizes, as you'll find in the Mebibyte Wikipedia Article. For example, the operating system Windows XP shows ...

0 Comment   |   Posted in Computer Terminology,Tips & Tricks,blog December 08, 2009