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A byte is a
sequence of 8 bits (enough to
represent one alphanumeric character) processed as a single unit of
information. A single letter or character would use one byte of memory (8
bits), two characters would use two bytes (16 bits).
Put another way, a bit is either an 'on' or an 'off' which
is processed by a computer processor, we represent 'on' as '1' and 'off' as
'0'. 8 bits are known as a byte, and it is bytes which are used to pass our
information in its basic form - characters.
An alphanumeric character (e.g. a letter or number such as
'A', 'B' or '7') is stored as 1 byte. For example, to store the letter 'R' uses
1 byte, which is stored by the computer as 8 bits, '01010010'.
A document containing 100 characters would use 100 bytes
(800 bits) - assuming the file didn't have any overhead (additional data about
the file which forms part of the file). Note, many non-alphanumeric characters
such as symbols and foreign language characters use multiple bytes.
A kilobyte (KB) is 1024
bytes, a megabyte (MB) is 1024 kilobytes and so on as these following demonstrate.
1 Bit = Binary digit
8 Bits = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte
There are lots of different "types" of disks out
there. You've probably already heard of most of them -- floppy disks, CDs,
DVDs, and of course the hard disk that lives inside every computer. Hard disks
come in many different sizes. Usually in the range of 20GB to 120GB. Table 4
lists the storage capacities of common types of disks. The column on the right
describes the capacity in relation to the capacity of a floppy disk, just to
give you some perspective on how greatly these capacities vary.
Floppy Disk = 1.4 MB
CD = 700 MB
DVD = 4.7 GB
Hard disk = 20 GB to 120 GB
According to International Data Corporation, the total
amount of global data is expected to grow to 2.7 zettabytes during 2012. This
is 48% up from 2011.
