GenzeeDigital Storage Converter
Convert between digital storage units — bits, bytes, KB, MB, GB, TB — in both decimal (what storage is sold in) and binary (what your OS reports) systems.
Result
1,000 MB
1 GB converted
Why a "1TB" drive shows less than 1TB on your computer
Storage manufacturers measure capacity in decimal units, where 1 kilobyte = 1,000 bytes, 1 megabyte = 1,000 kilobytes, and so on — consistent with how every other metric measurement (kilometres, kilograms) works. Operating systems, however, traditionally report storage in binary units, where 1 kibibyte = 1,024 bytes. The two systems disagree by about 7% at the gigabyte scale and more at larger scales, which is exactly why a drive sold as "1TB" shows up as roughly 931GiB in a binary-reporting file explorer — no storage is missing, it's simply being counted differently.
Decimal vs. binary, explained
Decimal units (KB, MB, GB, TB) use clean powers of 1,000 and are the units used in storage marketing and most network speed measurements. Binary units (KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB) use powers of 1,024 and are what many operating systems, including Windows' file explorer, actually display — sometimes using decimal unit labels while performing binary-scale math, which is part of why the confusion persists.
When each system is used
RAM capacity is almost always a genuinely binary quantity (8GB of RAM is exactly 8 × 1024³ bytes) because of how memory chips are physically organized. Storage drive capacity and internet/network speeds are conventionally decimal. Knowing which convention applies to what you're measuring avoids the classic "why is my storage smaller than advertised" confusion.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my 1TB drive show 931GB in Windows?
Windows reports storage using binary units (multiples of 1,024) while labeling them with decimal unit names (GB instead of GiB). 1TB in decimal terms (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) equals approximately 931GiB in binary terms — no capacity is actually missing.
Is internet speed measured in bits or bytes?
Internet and network speeds are almost universally advertised in bits per second (Mbps, Gbps), while file sizes are almost universally measured in bytes. Since 1 byte = 8 bits, a "100 Mbps" connection tops out around 12.5 MB per second in practice, not 100.
Should I use decimal or binary for RAM?
RAM capacity is a physically binary quantity due to how memory addressing works, so binary units (GiB) are technically the accurate description, even though RAM is almost always marketed and discussed using decimal-style labels (GB) in casual use.