Size computer file

Megabyte is now kilobytes which on the other hand is one thousand bytes. The old multiples of units are now with new prefixes and mebibyte is kibibytes and a kibibyte is bytes.

Changing something existing and well established and known by billions of people in my opinion is not a good idea, but it is my own personal position. It would be much less confusing to use new unit names, but that would not correspond to the metric system naming convention. There was no perfect solution so we have to get used to it. If you are purchasing a storage device you can see that a 2TB hard drives displays as 1.

Windows still uses the old unit naming convention which causes the discrepancy. So bear in ming that when purchasing a new hard drive or memory card. Here is a list of some of the commonly used units in the metric and their corresponding IEC binary prefixes:. File sizes are limited by the file system that is used and its implementation.

Here are details on the common file systems:. You can use it to manage files and view file sizes. As you can see on the screenshot below we have a list of some image files.

The rightmost "Size" column displays the size of the files. To view the sizes of the files you have to switch the view to "Details". To do that click the "More options" button at the top-right corner of Windows Explorer and select "Details". The size is automatically displayed in the most appropriate units - in this case KB. Clicking the column title the files will be sorted by size. Unfortunately the folder sizes are not listed in the "Size" column.

To view those you can use our free Folder Size Explorer application which will reveal all folder sizes and all missing disk space. If you want more precise information you can right-click a file and select 'Properties'. The following file properties panel will be displayed:. Here you can find the exact file size and also the other file properties like created, modified, and accessed times.

Some of the file attributes are also listed and can be toggled. You can also select multiple files and once all the files you want are highlighted, right-click any of the highlighted files and choose Properties. In the Properties window, it shows the size of all files combined. See: How to select or highlight multiple files and folders.

The following instructions contain information on the different methods a user can utilize to view the size of a file or files in MS-DOS. The command above lists all text files in the current directory , as shown in the picture below.

As seen in the example above, this shows there are five txt files in the current directory with a total size of , bytes. A group of eight bits is known as a byte. Of course, these bytes may also be combined to represent larger numbers. The computer represents all characters and numbers internally in the same fashion. A kilobyte is not exactly, as one might expect, of bytes. Rather, the correct amount is 2 10 i.

Similarly, a megabyte is not 2 i. This is a remarkable difference. By the time we reach to a gigabyte i. Both computer memory and disk space are measured in these units. A byte can also grasp a string of bits that need to be used in some larger units of application processes e. Computer storage is generally measured in multiples of the byte. For example, a MB hard drive holds a nominal million bytes — or megabytes — of data.

For example, two megabytes or 2 million bytes are actually 2, , decimal bytes. The Conflict Once a KiloByte was considered truly massive at a time. Some felt that writing 2 10 was a bit unwisely and also might also confuse others. This was done as the people with no knowledge of binary will not get the extra 24 bytes of storage. Now imagine ignoring 24 GB or even 24 TB of data. But now it was too late, people now know that the KB was 1, Bytes and not 1, Bytes.

Unfortunately, it seems that the actions of these regulators have not helped to clarify the difference between the kilobyte and the kibibyte.

KiloByte The kilobyte is the smallest unit of memory measurement but greater than a byte. It antecedes the MegaByte, which contains 1, , bytes. One kilobyte is technically 1, bytes, therefore, kilobytes are often used synonymously with kibibytes, which contain exactly 1, bytes 2 Kilobytes are mostly used to measure the size of small files.

For example, a simple text document may contain 10 KB of data and therefore it would have a file size of 10 kilobytes. Graphics of small websites are often between 5 KB and KB in size. Individual files typically take up a minimum of four kilobytes of disk space.

Megabytes are mostly used to measure the size of large files. For example, a high-resolution JPEG image might range in size from megabytes.