Do you know the difference between a megabit (MB) and a megabyte (MB)? Both are almost the same, written about the same, but they are completely different.
Both terms are very important, as they determine the speed of data, such as the internet connection (which you pay in Companies) but also the size of data on storage devices such as hard drives.
Below we will explain everything you need to know about megabit (MB) and megabytes (MB).
What is Megabit and what is Megabyte?
First we have to look at where everything starts, and we mean the bit. The bit is a bit, a very small unit of digital, electronic data. Eight of these bits make us a byte. A megabit (Mb) contains about 1 million of these bits, and eight (8) megabits are a single megabyte.
Generally, data sizes for hard drives and files are usually measured in bytes, while bits are used to measure data on internet connections.
Gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB) are more used when talking about data storage. One gigabyte contains about 1000 megabytes and one terabyte is 1000 gigabyte.
What is the difference between Mb and MB?
The shortcuts they are very important and you should pay attention to them. The megabit, which is a smaller unit than the megabyte, is written with a lowercase “b”, i.e. “Mb”. Megabyte which is a larger unit is written with a capital “B” in “MB”.
Both megabits and megabytes are commonly used to indicate the speed of data transfer, on hard drives or internet connections. If you are referring to internet connections only, then the abbreviations become “Mbps” and “MBps.” “ps” comes from per second, or per second.
Why you need to know about Megabit and Megabytes
We all need internet access now. So often we hear about packages offering speeds of "up to 50Mbps" or "24Mbps" and so on. So it's important to know exactly what you're paying for.
You might think that a package of 50Mbps sounds like super fast. You are not wrong, but do not expect to download files with 50MB per second.
This is because when ISPs sell a "up to 50Mbps" connection, they actually report 50 megabits per second rather than 100 megabytes per second.
An example (rounded). If you have a 100Mbps connection, this is actually 12,5MBps, which does not sound and so impressive (to those who do not know). 12,5 comes out dividing 100 with 8, since eight bits are a megabit.
So an 400Mbps connection translates to 50MBps. Again, the first number is much more impressive than the second one.
Marketing
Internet service providers use megabits as a very good marketing tactic. They can make their packages much more attractive to potential customers. Another trap is the "to", as they say you can catch these speeds, but not at rush hour.
The service SpeedTest provides you with a good test environment and displays results in Mbps. However, you can change the service setting to produce MBps results instead of Mbps.
Hard drives
If you want to buy a new hard drive for the computer you, or some external hard, you should pay attention to the ability. Disk sizes show the capacity usually in gigabytes.
When you buy discs, you will find sizes in 256GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, and so on. These numbers are translated into 256000MB, 500000MB and 750000MB, respectively.
1TB is 1000GB, so it's about 1000000MB. The formula to find out how many megabytes are contained is to multiply the gigabytes on 1000.
To convert to megabits or vice versa use your girlfriend Google.
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To understand better, until now I knew that 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes because of the 2 ^ 10 relationship, so the values change for MB, GB, TB, etc.
Has something changed officially and now 1 kilobyte = 1000 byte?
Thanks in advance.
has not changed, we are talking about the difference between megabit and megabyte, or kilobit bytes