– why are there 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte? Why didn’t they make it an even 1000?
In: Technology
Answer: pretty much what everyone has said.
Actual answer: It **is** 1000.
What we call a megabyte, what **everyone** calls a megabyte is actually technically a Mebibyte. Mega is an SI prefix meaning 1000, but computers work in base 2 and so 1000 isn’t a ‘nice even number’ in binary.
They were called megabytes because it’s ‘around 1000’ bytes. When SI naming was decided, Mebibyte (mega binary byte) was chosen to differentiate between the standard of 1000 = Mega naming system.
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