– why are there 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte? Why didn’t they make it an even 1000?

Question

– why are there 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte? Why didn’t they make it an even 1000?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Because it’s a power of 2.

But in practice, people just use 1000 anyways. Check bits and other overhead consumes some small % of the byte anyways, and when you scale up to the size of a gigabyte it’s not worth figuring out how much usable memory you have. And besides, we’re talking about a 2% difference, which for conversation doesn’t matter. The computer will do all it’s compression & what not and spit out the real value if you need to the real value, but for conversation, 1000 individual megabyte folders are just a gigabyte. Not “97% of a gigabyte”