What is kilobyte? Convert bits to kilobytes

Computers are firmly entering our lives, despite the fact that 10-15 years ago they seemed like a luxury that few people could afford. Moreover, the younger generation is better guided in the new technology. But everyone who deals with computers is faced with certain terms that are not clear to everyone: bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and so on. And therefore, different questions inevitably arise: what is a kilobyte, how can you transfer from one unit of measurement to another, and so on.

Information

Information in our time is valued above all, and for any modern person is a kind of weapon. It is especially appreciated among major global companies in various fields. This also applies to the world of computers, where information has its own units of measurement, and anyone who is interested in 21st century technologies just needs to know them.

The information stored on the computer is closely related mainly to the hard disk device. Everyone who has such a technique at home will sooner or later become interested in how it is built and what basic components it consists of. You can find many books on this subject in bookstores; within the framework of this article we restrict ourselves to a hard drive.

Hard disk - electronic information storage area

Each computer or laptop has a hard drive, which is the habitat of all digital information. And before you answer the question, what is a kilobyte, you can look inside and understand how the information is stored here. Inside the device there is an electric motor, a unit consisting of several disks (pancakes), over which there are heads and a set of wiring diagrams.

What is typical, before pancakes there were at least 2, that is, their total number reached 4 or more. Modern hard drives of even large capacity have 1 or 2 pancakes, although in most cases only one. This is due to the use of modern technologies for the production of hard drives, due to which it became possible to reduce the recording density. In other words, there are fewer pancakes, and more information is being recorded. Modern hard drives up to 2 or 3 terabytes also already contain one pancake.

Now turning to the question of what is a kilobyte, we can say the following. Each pancake of the hard disk rotates at high speed, which is 5 or 7 thousand revolutions per minute. For server hard drives, this number increases to 10,000. It is noteworthy, but the heads do not touch pancakes, but hover above them, because they have a thin coating that is easy to damage.

On the hard drive, any information is recorded in blocks. And each pancake is marked on concentric tracks, each of which is divided into sectors containing no more than 512 bytes of information. A chain of consecutive sectors forms a cluster. All heads move simultaneously due to a special motor. Information is recorded on disks in the form of short electrical pulses acting on their ferromagnetic surface.

This is how bits are born - the smallest unit of measure. And continuing to open the question of what is a kilobyte, you can not ignore it.

The basic unit is byte

In computer science, bit is the smallest basic unit of digital information. It refers to binary code and can take only two values: 0 and 1. The following concept - byte - already means a whole block of information, consisting of 8 bits, and is always a multiple of 2. In some cases, this block is called an octet. Based on this, it can be understood that the byte is the smallest component of the data.

But what is kilobyte? Information on a computer is stored in different volumes, and recently, files in size are becoming larger and larger. Take even random access memory: if earlier it was possible to manage 2 gigabytes, now 4 is not enough. Therefore, to measure information of large sizes, the introduction of derived units from the main value was adopted. That is, a kilobyte is a derivative of the base, a byte. And how many bits are in kilobytes - the answer to this question is further.

Derivatives

As already mentioned above, derivative units are taken to mean a reduction in the total value. They are found not only in the field of computer science. A meter is used to measure the length, and its derivatives - kilometer, nanometer and others. Derived bytes are formed by adding the prefixes "kilo", "mega", "gig" and others.

For the first time, the term byte was used by Werner Buchholz back in 1956. As said, an 8-bit byte is commonly called an octet. There is also 4-bit, which is called nibble. The use of consoles has gained distribution since 1789. The very first was the prefix “kilo” and “mega”.

It is clear that at that time computers were just beginning to exist, and the amount of information was small and was calculated by these derivatives. However, already from the second half of the 20th century, new prefixes of "gig", "tera" and others appeared. And you can only guess how many kilobytes they contain - a lot!

How to translate derivatives

Information is what surrounds us, what we can see, hear, read. The computer also perceives information, but only in its own way. To do this, he has a monitor and a system unit in which the hard disk is stored. Every year, the amount of information increases many times over, and ordinary users, one way or another, have to deal with the need to transfer one unit of its measurement to another. To clarify everything, we summarize everything in the table below.

Thus, it can be seen that 1 KB contains 1024 bytes. The same can be said of other derivatives. This can be brought to this form:

• 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes;
• 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes;
• 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes;
• 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes;
• 1 petabyte = 1024 terabytes (and so on).

Only bits in kilobytes are translated a little differently. It should be borne in mind that in one byte 8 bits. This was stated above. For example, we have a value equal to 128 bits, and we need to translate it into bytes. Using this rule, you need to divide the number of bits by 8. That is, when dividing 128 by 8, we have an answer equal to 16.

From the table above you can understand that the computer for the most part perceives and transmits all the information in its own language, which is understandable only to him. It is no coincidence that in computer science there is such a field as programming. Its specialists write programs in computer language, and this is basically a binary system of calculus. Although in programming, a hexadecimal number system is also used.

From kilobytes to megabytes and so on

It is clear that translating bits into kilobytes is not difficult, but there are other cases. Some users confuse derivatives such as megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. Mostly the latter appeared due to the fact that the files have now become large. However, in order not to be confused, you can be guided by the above table.

In fact, all digital information is presented on a computer in a different way:

• digital documents (official electronic documentation, books, magazines, etc.);
• images (drawings, photographs);
• musical works (there are many formats MP3, WAV, WMA AAC FLAC and others);
• video (clips, films, short videos).

Moreover, each type of information is characterized by its volume depending on the quality. For example, electronic documents usually have the smallest size, which amounts to several tens of kilobytes. In some cases, it can be several megabytes. These are e-books, magazines (how many kilobytes one megabyte contains, we already know).

Images typically occupy several hundred kilobytes of hard disk space. It all depends on the image format, which, in turn, has several dozen types.

As for the video, then usually we are talking about the volume of several gigabytes and also depends on the format. Films take up the most space, especially if they contain a colorful visual component. Size can reach 40, 50 or more gigabytes.

Data rate

Often, ordinary users are faced with terms such as kilobits, megabits (Mbit) and others. This is the speed of data transmission over the Internet. Often it is measured in kbit / s or Mbps. And if a byte is used to indicate the size of any files, then a bit is used to measure the speed, and often there is a need to find out how many kilobytes is, for example, 1 Mbit.

To do this, proceed from the following:

• 1 kbit / s = 1000 or 10 ³ bits per second;
• 1 Mbps = 1,000,000 or 10 ⁶ bits per second.

You can translate the values ​​from Mbit to megabytes by dividing by 8. That is, 1 Mbit / s will be 0.125 MB / s.

Translation tools

The need to translate units of electronic information is faced by everyone who has a computer. There are various programs for this. Some of them are free, while others will have to pay. Regardless of this, they make it easy to convert from one unit to another.

Moreover, they do not have to be downloaded to your computer, as there are converters that do this online. It is enough to go to the appropriate resource and enter the required value, after which the calculation will be made. Thus, it is possible to solve the question of how to convert to kilobytes from gigabytes or megabytes.