The capacity of the storage units is expressed in GB, TB and even PB, so it is important to know how big each one is.
One of the most important components of electronic devices such as game consoles, computers and even smartphones, is the storage unit, since not only the amount of multimedia content and documents that can be stored depends on it, but also the speed with which the system accesses them and displays them to the user.
Often, the ROM is often confused with the RAM because they are storage units, but both have marked differences, mainly being the time that the elements are kept.
The capacity of the storage units (ROM), whether they are SSID or HDD, is expressed in Gigabytes, Terabytes and even Petabytes. Each one has more space than the previous one, but it is necessary to know in detail what size each one has. Although, for this, it is necessary to start with the smallest unit of information.
What is a bit?
To understand the size of a giga, a tera and a petabyte, it is necessary to know what a bit is, since it is what makes up everything
All storage units have been designed in order to measure the storage capacity of a certain unit for data or information processing. Nevertheless, using these can be confusing since, for example, using the logic, 1 GB would be equivalent to 1000 MB, but it is not, it is equivalent to 1024 MB due to the number system used to express these units.
The handling of these storage units is essential to know how much ram memory you need on your PC or mobile, for example. In the case of a bit, it is worth noting that this is the acronym for “binary digit“, meaning binary digit of the binary number system. Therefore, a Bit is represented by two values of this systemwhich are “0” and “1”.
A Bit is considered as the “minimum unit of information“ and is fundamental in the binary communication of computers. Although these usually process more than one Bit for data transmission or storage, it is for this reason that Bits are grouped to form Bytes.
Also, Bits are calculated as a whole, which means that Bits can range from 8 Bits, 16 Bits up to 32 Bits or more. And these they are usually used in computer CPUs or microprocessors of other devices. A clear example of this is the description of a 32-bit CPU that refers to its processing capacity and also the size of the computer’s registers, but in units of Bits. Therefore, 32-bit processors have 32-bit registers and an ALU (Arithmetic Logical Unit) capacity of 32-bits, which allows them to process information in sets of bits of equal quantity.
Are Bytes and Bits the same?
Bits and bytes are closely related, but they are not the same.
Now that you know the meaning of a Bit, it is important to differentiate it from another widely used term such as “bytes“. A Byte is defined as the fixed set of Bits which generally includes 8 Bits, although there are exceptions, while Bits is the minimum unit of information.
All the partitioning of the Bytes is carried out in a standard way from the groups of 8 Bits which, in turn, is based on the character encoding of the “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”. But from a computer point of view, the calculation of the Bytes can be done in a simpler way like the following:
- 1 Byte is equal to 8 Bits, therefore, 1 kiloByte (kB) is equal to 1024 Bytes.
In the same way, continue with the rest of the storage units such as MegaBytes, GigaBytes, TeraBytes and else.
How big is a gigabyte?
This standard storage unit is represented as GB and equals 1024 MegaBytes. Gigabytes are widely used in the world of computing, their main objective being to provide information on the “storage capacity of a device”the size of a multimedia file and is even used in mobile plans to indicate the number of GB per month offered by the contract.
However, to understand the definition of a GigaByte, one must know the composition of this unit of measurement and the way in which it is related to the others. 1 GB is made up of 1 billion bytes. that, as already mentioned, the latter are grouped into 8 Bits.
Most storage units for home use are usually expressed in GB and go up to amounts of 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB. However, microSD handle lower figures, which is why many users today wonder how many photos fit on a 32 and 64 GB memory card, but this will depend entirely on the quality of these.
How big is a terabyte?
This storage unit typically used to measure all data storage on a drivealthough for individual files other units such as GB or MB are normally used.
One TeraBytes (TB) is equal to 1000 GB or, which is equivalent to 1,000,000 megaBytes (MB). To exemplify the use of TeraBytes, it can be added that, currently, most users who are demanding in terms of the use of their computers, whether they are dedicated to content creation or YouTube, need storage units of several TB. This is because the videos and resources that they are going to use are extremely heavy.
How big is a petabyte?
PetaBytes are the main unit of information in server centers, as well as in central units, since the data processed is of greater volume. These storage units equals 1024 times 1 TeraByte.
The use of PetaBytes has been increasingly implemented due to the digitization of content and technological advances. Also, its storage capacity is greaterso a 2.5-inch SSD has the capacity to store about 15TB, which means 68 SSDs are used for 1PB of data.