What's the difference between bits and bytes?

[saeddawoud]

hello
1 KB = 1000 (decimal) Bytes and 1 KB = 1024 (binary) Byte. what is the difference and when to use each of them? and is the same applied for bits?
Regards

 

[beetro78]

Re: Bits and Bytes

I think that the only way I have ever seen is 1KB = 1024 byte.

But correctly speaking one should say:

1 KiloByte = 10^3 Byte = 1000 Byte
1 KibiByte = 2^10 Byte = 1024 Byte

In the practice the two units are often confused in the word KILOBYTE, which should be referred only to 10^3 power as in the SI system it normally is.

Bye

 

[saeddawoud]

Re: Bits and Bytes

Thanx man I think this is the answer, i.e.: 2^10 = 1KB and 10^3 = 1KB.
In summary, 1KB = either 1000 Bytes ot 1024 Bytes depending on the base used, if decimal then 1KB=1000 Bytes, if binary (base 2) it is 1024 Bytes.

 

[A.Anand Srinivasan]

Re: Bits and Bytes

1KB=1024 bytes only... it is not the case of either 1000 or 1024...

since the difference between the two is comparatively small it has been used so... suppose you keep in mind the extra 24bytes then you would have to come up with a new naming for 1024... to make things easy 1024 is referred as 1KB...

 

[invent]

Re: Bits and Bytes

In many areas of the PC, only binary measures are used. For example, "64 MB of system RAM" always means 64 times 1,048,576 bytes of RAM, never 64,000,000. In other areas, only decimal measures are found: a "28.8K modem" works at a maximum speed of 28,800 bits per second, not 29,491.

Storage devices however are where the real confusion comes in. Some companies and software packages use binary megabytes and gigabytes, and some use decimal megabytes and gigabytes.

The IEEE has proposed a new naming convention for the binary numbers, to hopefully eliminate some of the confusion:

 

[phoenixfeng]

Bits and Bytes

in network transfer area, decimal is often used

 

[ehsanelahimirza]

Re: Bits and Bytes

when talking about memory or computers

windows ahndels them in such a way that
1K=1024

other than it as we have HDDs in market and the capacity mentioned is 200GB
then it is

2000,000,000 Bytes and coverting to 1024 system it makes almost 186GB
which is actually windows handling of memory

 

[thuyet]

Bits and Bytes

in computer language,always is 1024(binary) but in Hard disk manufacter used 1k=1000