Megabyte (MB)
A megabyte commonly known by its abbreviation MB, is a unit of computer storage. 1MB equals 1024 (KB) kilobytes or one million bytes (1,048,576) and there is 1,024 MB in 1 (GB) Gigabyte. Hard drives storage capacity used to be measured primarily in megabytes however with the size of hard drives becoming bigger and bigger most hard drives are measured in Gigabytes (eg. 80,000MB or 80GB). Computer memory is measured in megabytes and gigabytes (eg. 128MB (megabytes) or 1GB (gigabytes).
Other computer storages such as flash drives, and CDs are measured in megabytes. A common CD holds 700MB, while DVD disks can hold up to 4700MB or 4.7GB.
One common confusion with megabytes is that most hard drive manufacturers say that 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes, however operating systems and computer memory say that 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes (1024 x 1024).
Hopefully the table below will make clear how much a megabyte is actually worth.
Byte | 1 Byte | 0.001 KB | 0.000001 MB |
Kilobyte | 1,000 Byte | 1 KB | 0.001 MB |
Megabyte | 1,000,000 Byte | 1,000 KB | 1 MB |
Gigabyte | 1,000,000,000 Byte | 1,000,000 KB | 1,000 MB |