Understanding Data Storage Units
Data storage is measured in bytes and its multiples. There are two systems: decimal (SI) using powers of 1000 (KB, MB, GB, TB) and binary (IEC) using powers of 1024 (KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB). Operating systems often use binary units while storage manufacturers use decimal units, which is why a "1 TB" drive shows as approximately 931 GiB in your computer.
Decimal vs Binary
1 Kilobyte (KB) = 1,000 bytes, while 1 Kibibyte (KiB) = 1,024 bytes. The difference grows at larger scales: 1 Terabyte (TB) = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes, while 1 Tebibyte (TiB) = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes — a difference of nearly 10%. This converter handles both systems accurately.