Advanced options
Decimal units (1 GB = 1,000 MB) as used by drive manufacturers and mobile data plans. Operating systems often count in binary (1 GiB = 1,024 MiB), which is why a "1TB" drive shows as about 931GB in Windows.
What The Data Storage Converter Works Out
- Megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes: the amount restated in each decimal unit, stepping by factors of 1,000 (1,000 KB to a MB, 1,000 MB to a GB, 1,000 GB to a TB). This is the system drive makers, phone plans and broadband caps all use.
- Roughly how much is that table: the same storage as a count of 4 MB phone photos, 8 MB songs, 4 GB HD films and hours of 4K streaming at 7 GB an hour. A typical laptop drive holds 256 GB to 1 TB.
- The amount I entered is counted in (advanced): tell the converter whether your figure came from a box or plan (decimal) or from a Windows, macOS or Linux properties box (binary, where 1 GiB is 1,024 MiB). Choosing binary means the decimal figures show what the same bytes would be labelled as on the box.
- As your computer shows it (advanced): the same number of bytes in binary units. Computers historically count in powers of 1,024, so a "1TB" drive appears as about 931 GiB: nothing is missing, they are two units wearing similar names, and the gap is about 7% at the gigabyte level and 10% at the terabyte level.
- Formatting and file system overhead (advanced): a percentage lost to partition tables, file allocation tables and reserved blocks. 1% to 3% is typical for NTFS or exFAT; SSDs with over-provisioning and RAID mirrors lose far more. The usable figure is also what the file count uses.
- Time to transfer (advanced): bytes times 8 divided by the connection speed in megabits per second. Storage is measured in bytes but connections in bits, eight to the byte, so a 100 Mbps line moves at most 12.5 MB a second and a 5 GB file takes about 6 min 40 sec; a USB 3.0 stick manages roughly 400 Mbps in practice.
- Your own file size (advanced): enter any file size in MB (a 25 MB RAW photo, a 50 GB game as 50,000) to count how many fit in the usable space.
- Cost per gigabyte (advanced): the price you paid divided by the decimal capacity, with the per-terabyte figure underneath. In the UK, desktop hard drives cost about GBP 15 to 25 per TB and SATA or NVMe SSDs GBP 50 to 90 per TB, so the card tells you quickly whether a deal is good.
- Unit ladder table (advanced): bytes to petabytes in decimal and binary side by side, plus the equivalent in bits for transfer maths.