Helpful Hints 

If you work with computers you work with bits of information that have a lot of byte. Get clued up and next time your IT person treats you like an uninformed and pitiful earthling you can put the byte on him/her with your bits of information.

· 1 Bit = Binary Digit

· 8 Bits = 1 Byte

· 1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte

· 1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte

· 1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte

· 1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte

· 1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte

· 1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte

· 1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte

· 1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte

· 1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte

· 1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

-----------------------

Bit: A Bit is the smallest unit of data that a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information, such as Yes or No.

Byte: A Byte is equal to 8 Bits. A Byte can represent 256 states of information, for example, numbers or a combination of numbers and letters. 1 Byte could be equal to one character. 10 Bytes could be equal to a word. 100 Bytes would equal an average sentence.

Kilobyte: A Kilobyte is approximately 1,000 Bytes, actually 1,024 Bytes depending on which definition is used. 1 Kilobyte would be equal to this paragraph you are reading, whereas 100 Kilobytes would equal an entire page.

Megabyte: A Megabyte is approximately 1,000 Kilobytes. In the early days of computing, a Megabyte was considered to be a large amount of data. These days with a 500 Gigabyte hard drive on a computer being common, a Megabyte doesn't seem like much anymore. One of those old 3-1/2 inch floppy disks can hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a small book. 100 Megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 Megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CD-ROM disk.

(My first PC had a hard drive of only 600mb. At the time we didn't think that it was possible to fill it. Considering that we were moving from Floppy drives (remember those) and stiffy drives this was a tremendous leap forward in data storage) Johan

Gigabyte: A Gigabyte is approximately 1,000 Megabytes. A Gigabyte is a very common term used these days when referring to disk space or drive storage. 1 Gigabyte of data is almost twice the amount of data that a CD-ROM can hold. But it's about one thousand times the capacity of a 3-1/2 floppy disk. 1 Gigabyte could hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals.

Terabyte: A Terabyte is approximately one trillion bytes, or 1,000 Gigabytes. Now we are getting up there to a size that is so large that it is not a common term yet. To put it in some perspective, a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte images or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video. A Terabyte could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collection of the Library of Congress. That's a lot of data.

Petabyte: A Petabyte is approximately 1,000 Terabytes or one million Gigabytes. It's hard to visualize what a Petabyte could hold. 1 Petabyte could hold approximately 20 million 4-door filing cabinets full of text. It could hold 500 billion pages of standard printed text. It would take about 500 million floppy disks to store the same amount of data.

Exabyte: An Exabyte is approximately 1,000 Petabytes. Another way to look at it is that a Petabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes or one billion Gigabytes. There is not much to compare an Exabyte to. It has been said that 5 Exabytes would be equal to all of the words ever spoken by mankind.

Zettabyte: A Zettabyte is approximately 1,000 Exabytes. There is nothing to compare a Zettabyte to but to say that it would take a whole lot of ones and zeroes to fill it up.

Yottabyte: A Yottabyte is approximately 1,000 Zettabytes. It would take approximately 11 trillion years to download a yottabyte file from the Internet using high-power broadband. You can compare it to the World Wide Web as the entire Internet almost takes up a Yottabyte.

Brontobyte: A Brontobyte is (you guessed it) approximately 1,000 Yottabytes. The only thing there is to say about a Brontobyte is that it is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes!

Geopbyte: A Geopbyte is about 1000 Brontobytes! Not sure why this term was created. I'm doubting that anyone alive today will ever see a Geopbyte hard drive. One way of looking at a geopbyte is 15267 6504600 2283229 4012496 7031205 376 bytes!

Now you should have a good understanding of megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and everything in between. Now if we can just figure out what a WhatsAByte is......:)

Data from http://www.whatsabyte.com/index.htm

To live your best life be true to the YOU, that you want to be.

Live with passion. Change your life from making a living to making a difference.

Live up to the reputation that you want to have.