Bit’s, crumbs, nibbles, bytes, megabytes ???
Ever wondered why when you buy a 250 Gigabyte hard drive and you format it, you never actually get 250 Gigabytes??? Well it’s all in the exact wording used, and how the information is reported to you.
If we understand the terms of binary, and the difference between a Megabyte and a Megabit, the answer becomes clear.
Firstly, Binary is based on a 2-base number system. The ‘2 numbers’ are 0 and 1 (otherwise known as the “Off” and “On” bits).
A bit, is purely a representation of one value, either a ‘0’ or a ‘1’
A crumb, which is not commonly known or referred to, is a representation of 2 bits (00, 01, 10 ,11)
A nibble, also not that commonly known, is 4 bits, or half a byte. (0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111 etc)
A byte, is a collection of 8 bits, and hence there are 8 bits in a byte. (00000000, 00000001, 00000010, 00000011 etc)
| bit | bit | 0 or 1 |
| byte | B | 8 bits |
| kibibit | Kibit | 1024 bits |
| kilobit | kbit | 1000 bits |
| kibibyte (binary) | KiB | 1024 bytes |
| kilobyte (decimal) | kB | 1000 bytes |
| megabit | Mbit | 1000 kilobits |
| mebibyte (binary) | MiB | 1024 kibibytes |
| megabyte (decimal) | MB | 1000 kilobytes |
| gigabit | Gbit | 1000 megabits |
| gibibyte (binary) | GiB | 1024 mebibytes |
| gigabyte (decimal) | GB | 1000 megabytes |
| terabit | Tbit | 1000 gigabits |
| tebibyte (binary) | TiB | 1024 gibibytes |
| terabyte (decimal) | TB | 1000 gigabytes |
| petabit | Pbit | 1000 terabits |
| pebibyte (binary) | PiB | 1024 tebibytes |
| petabyte (decimal) | PB | 1000 terabytes |
| exabit | Ebit | 1000 petabits |
| exbibyte (binary) | EiB | 1024 pebibytes |
| exabyte (decimal) | EB | 1000 petabytes |
So based on the above, I have a hard drive that has ‘250GB’ written on the casing. If I right-click on my drive in windows, and go to properties, I see that drive size as 250,056,704,000 bytes (250GB), which is 232 GiB.
One thought on “What is Binary?”
I started CCNA on Monday and I somehow saw you browsing your website while explaining something.I don’t regret coming here,it’s been very educational. I’m busy learning binary like crazy. Thanks a lot.