Weights and Measures. Converters for Computer Measurements.

There are special measurements related to computers. We have a couple of converters for such measurements.

Metric system uses traditional prefixes for all units. A kilo- prefix means a thousand, so that kilogram is 1000 grams and kilometer is 1000 meters. A mega- prefix means a million, i.e. megaton equals to 1,000,000 tons.

When computers were invented, this strict and nice system of metric prefixes was at first disrupted. Computers operate with binary numbers and thus it was easier to measure computer memory by chunks of 1024 instead of 1000. Thus, in computer measurements kilobyte became 1024 bytes instead of 1000 bytes and megabyte became 1,048,576 bytes (1024*1024) instead of 1,000,000 bytes.

That went on for quite some time until scientists decided it was wrong for the same kilo- prefix to mean either 1000, or 1024 depending on the measure. As a result, in 1998 IEC international standard defined new official prefixes for binary multiplies used in computer measurements. The new prefixes are kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, tebi-, etc.

Even though the old plain metric prefixes are still often used in everyday life, to be correct, one should say "one tebibyte of data" instead of "one terabyte". One tebibyte is exactly 1,099,511,600,000 bytes no matter what. As for one terabyte, it could either mean the same (in old notation) or plain metric 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. The difference between the two is huge - almost 10%.

Our computer storage converter features data storage and transmission units and old CNC memory capacity units (by tape length).

Data transfer rate is a speed that data can be transmitted or received. It can be used, for example, to measure the speed of the Internet connection. The speed can be measured in terms of bits per second (more technical) or bytes per second (more practical for everyday use).

Our data transfer rate converter features basic bit-based transfer rate units, byte-based units with 1000-based metric prefixes, byte-based units with 1024-based binary prefixes, reverse units to measure time required for the transfer of specific data - both 1000-based and 1024-based prefixes. We also have a long list of typical connection speed examples