Systems are often measured in terabytes, but most files seen on a daily basis are stored in gigabytes or megabytes. So many people ask: how much is 1TB? Well, if you have the same questions, check out this post from MiniTool for answers now.
Both MB (megabyte) and GB (gigabyte) are commonly used units to measure storage size. However, not many people are familiar with TB (terabyte). And they are confused: how much is 1TB? Well, if you have the same question in mind, please keep on reading.
About 1TB
Before I illustrate you how much is 1TB, you may need to learn the following basic concepts first:
- Bit: Bit is the basic unit used in computer data storage. A bit has a single binary value, either 0 or 1.
- Byte : one byte is a group of 8 binary digits. So a byte equals to 8 bits.
- Kilobyte: KB stands for Kilobyte. 1 KB is equals to 1024 bytes.
- Megabyte: MB stands for Megabyte. 1 MB is equal to 1024 kilobyte (KB).
- Gigabyte: GB stands for 1 GB is equal to 1024 MB.
- Terabyte: TB stands for 1 TB is equal to 1024 GB.
You may be interested in this post: How Many Gigabytes (GB) Are in a Terabyte (TB)
So from the above, we can see that 1 TB equals 1,024 gigabytes (GB) or 1,048,576 megabytes (MB).
However, this is not the only answer. 1 TB could be 1000 GB or 1,000,000 MB. Why? Because there are 2 different number systems: Binary and Decimal.
Binary says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, while Decimal says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes.
As computers use binary-based measurement system, 1 TB will be equal 1024 GB. While all major disk drive manufacturers and storage industries use decimal values when measuring storage capacity. So for them, 1TB will be equal to 1000GB. That’s also why when we connect a 1 TB hard drive to our PC but it only shows about 931 GB available.
So if you are confused about how much is 1TB in GB, remember this:
- For Manufacturers, 1 MB equals to 1000 bytes; 1 GB equals to 1000 MB; 1 TB equals to 1000GB.
- For Computers: 1 MB equals to 1024 Bytes; 1 GB equals to 1024 MB; 1 TB equals to 1024GB
How Much Is 1TB of Data
We usually store various files on our hard drive such as photos, videos, games, documents and so on. How much is 1TB of data?
Well, 1TB of data may allow you to store 300,000 photos that are taken with a 12MP camera; 500 hours of HD video, 17,000 hours of music and 6 million document pages such as PDFs and presentations. But this is only for your reference because it may be not as accurate as you think due to different data sizes.
It is obliviously difficult to figure out how many documents or videos that 1TB of data can hold as there are so many different variants that may increase or decrease the given number such as quality of the music. So just take the above figures as a reference.
With a 1TB hard drive, you can store a lot of large files such as movies, 4K or 8K RAW video footage with ease. And you don’t need to worry about the disk space usage. if you want to upgrade to a 1TB SSD or HDD, here is a post for your reference:
Now you should know how much is 1TB. Do you have different opinions? We are glad to have you share it with us.