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What’s the difference between a megabtye and a gigabyte? How about a kilobyte?

Gigabyte, megabyte, kilobytes... Hard to tell what language that is, huh? Actually, it's pretty simple. All these words are used to describe amounts of digital storage space. Most of the time you hear these terms used in relation to how big hard drives are and how much RAM or memory is in a computer. There are lots of confusing details about these words and what they measure, but there's no need to get into all that stuff, and really it's quite simple once you learn the progression.

A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes. And a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. And so on and so on. Here's a quick rundown of the major terms you're likely to hear, starting at the smallest unit, the bit.

• 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

Now, the next time you go out looking for a big 500 gigabyte hard drive, you'll know what you're talking about!