What is a kilobyte? Transfer Bits to Kilobytes

Computers are firmly embedded in our lives, despite the fact that even 10-15 years ago they seemed a luxury that is accessible to a few. And the younger generation is better oriented in the new technology. But everyone who deals with computers, face with some or other terms that are not clear to everyone: bytes, megabytes, gigabytes and so on. And therefore inevitably there are different questions: what is a kilobyte, How can one translate from one unit of measure to another, and so on.

Information

Information in our time is valued above all, and for any modern man is a kind of weapon. It is especially appreciated among large world companies in various fields. This concerns the world of computers where information has its own units of measurement, and anyone who is interested in the technologies of the 21st century simply needs to know them.

The information stored on the computer is closely related mainly to the hard disk drive. Everyone who has such a technique at home, sooner or later begins to wonder how it is arranged and what major components it consists of. On this topic in the bookstores you can find many books, within the framework of this article we confine ourselves to a hard disk.

Hard drive - area of storage of electronic information

Each computer or laptop has a hard drive that is the home of all digital information. And before you answer the question, what is a kilobyte, you can look inside and understand how the information is stored here. Inside the device there is an electric motor, a block consisting of several disks (pancakes), over which the heads and a set of electrical circuits are located.

What is characteristic, before pancakes were at least 2, that is, their total number reached 4 or more. Modern hard drives, even large capacity, have 1 or 2 pancakes, although in most cases only one. This is due to the use of modern technologies for the production of hard disks, due to which it became possible to reduce the recording density. In other words, pancakes became smaller, and the volume of recorded information is larger. Modern hard drives up to 2 or 3 terabytes in size already contain one pancake each.

Now turning to the question, what is a kilobyte, we can say the following. Each hard drive pancake rotates at a high speed, which is 5 or 7 thousand rpm. For server hard drives, this figure is increased to 10,000. Notably, the heads do not touch the pancakes, but float above them, as they have a thin coating that is easily damaged.

On the hard disk, any information is written in blocks. And each pancake is marked on concentric tracks, each of which is divided into sectors containing no more than 512 bytes of information. A chain of successive sectors forms a cluster. All heads move simultaneously due to a special motor. Information is recorded on disks in the form of short electrical impulses acting on their ferromagnetic surface.

So the bits are born - the smallest unit of measurement. And continuing to disclose the question of what a kilobyte is, you can not bypass it.

Basic unit - byte

In the field of informatics, the bit represents the smallest basic unit of digital information. It refers to a binary code and can take only two values: 0 and 1. The next notion - byte - means already a whole block of information consisting of 8 bits, and is always a multiple of 2. In some cases, this block is called an octet. Based on this, it can be understood that the byte is the smallest part of the data.

But what is a kilobyte? The information on the computer is stored in different volumes, and recently the files are becoming bigger by the size. Take even RAM: if before you could do with 2 gigabytes, then now 4 is small. Therefore, to measure information of large sizes, it was accepted to introduce the derived units from the main value. That is, a kilobyte is derived from the stem byte. And how many bits in kilobytes - the answer to this question further.

Derivatives

As already mentioned above, the derived units are taken to mean the reduction of the total value. They meet not only in the field of computer science. To measure the length, a meter is used, and its derivatives are kilometers, nanometers and others. Derived bytes are formed by adding consoles "kilo", "mega", "giga" and others.

For the first time, the term byte was used by Werner Buchholz in 1956. As it was said, an 8-bit byte is usually called an octet (Octet). There are also 4-bits, which is called Nibble (Nibble). The use of consoles has become widespread since 1789. The very first prefix was "kilo" and "mega".

It is clear, at that time computers only began to exist, and the amount of information was small and was calculated by these derivatives. However, from the second half of the 20th century new "Giga", "Tera" and others have appeared. And you can only guess how many kilobytes they contain - very much!

How to translate derivatives

Information is what surrounds us, what we can see, hear, read. The computer also perceives the information, but only in its own way. To do this, he has a monitor and a system unit, which is exactly where the hard disk is stored. Every year the volume of information increases many times, and ordinary users, one way or another, have to face the need to translate one unit of its measurement into others. To clarify everything, we will reduce everything to the table, which is presented below.

Thus, we see that 1 KB contains 1024 bytes. The same can be said about other derivatives. This can be brought to this form:

• 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes;
• 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes;
• 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes;
• 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes;
• 1 petabyte = 1024 terabytes (and so on).

Only bits in kilobytes are translated slightly differently. Here it is worth considering that in one byte 8 bits. This was mentioned above. For example, we have a value equal to 128 bits, and we need to translate it into bytes. Using this rule, you need to divide the number of bits by 8. That is, when dividing 128 by 8, we have a response equal to 16.

From the table above you can understand that the computer for the most part perceives and transmits all the information in its language, which is understandable only to him. It is no accident that in computer science there is such an area as programming. Its specialists write programs in computer language, and this is basically a binary system of calculus. Although the programming also uses hexadecimal notation.

From kilobytes to megabytes and so on

It is clear that the bits in kilobytes can be easily translated, but there are other cases. Some users confuse such derivatives, as megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Mainly the latter appeared due to the fact that the files now become large. However, in order not to be confused, you can follow the above table.

In fact, all the digital information is represented on the computer in different forms:

• Digital documents (official electronic documentation, books, magazines, etc.);
• Images (pictures, photos);
• Musical works (there are many formats MP3, WAV, WMA AAC FLAC and others);
• Video (clips, films, short films).

In this case, each type of information is characterized by its volume, depending on the quality. For example, electronic documents usually have the smallest size, which is calculated in several tens of kilobytes. In some cases, it can be several megabytes. These are e-books, magazines (how many kilobytes contains one megabyte, we already know).

Images, as a rule, occupy several hundred kilobytes on the hard drive. It all depends on the format of the image, which, in turn, has several dozen types.

As for the video, then usually we are talking about a volume of several gigabytes and also depends on the format. Movies take up most of the space, especially if they contain a colorful visual component. The size can reach up to 40, 50 or more gigabytes.

Data speed

Often, ordinary users are faced with such terms as kilobit, megabit (Mbit) and others. This indicates the speed of data transmission over the Internet. Often, it is measured in kbit / s or Mbps. And if a byte is used to indicate the size of any files, a bit is used to measure the speed, and often it becomes necessary to know how many kilobytes it is, for example, 1 Mbit.

To do this, proceed from the following:

• 1 kbit / s = 1000 or 10 ³ bits per second;
• 1 Mbit / s = 1,000,000 or 10 ⁶ bits per second.

You can translate the values from Mbit to megabytes by dividing by 8. That is, 1 Mbps will be 0.125 MB / s.

Means of translation

With the need to translate units of electronic information, everyone who has a computer faces. For this, there are various programs. Some of them are free, but others will have to be paid. Regardless, they allow you to easily convert from one unit to another.

And they do not necessarily have to be downloaded to your computer, since there are converters that do this online. It is enough to go to the appropriate resource and enter the required value, after which the calculation will be made. Thus, you can decide how to convert to kilobytes from gigabytes or megabytes.