BITS VS BYTES(Byte ve Bit Arasındaki İlişki)

This is the boring stuff.I apologize in advance, because there’s no way to make this stuff interesting.But it’s necessary. You have to have an idea about the size of your files, graphics, videos, MP3 and other digital items and also the size of the drives and other peripherals required to handle them most efficiently. Whether it’s the amount of RAM on your main board, your hard drive, DVD burner, flash drive or network backup drive, they’re all expressed in the measurements which follow. So, like it or not, you have to have at least a relative basic understanding of bits and bytes:


A bit (short for BInary digiT) is the smallest unit of data in a computer. A bit can have a binary value of either 0 or 1. Binary means that there are only two logical (i.e. on/off, true/false) choices. Until the value is actually determined, it can have two states. With respect to the physical storage of bits on a computer’s hard disk drive, the binary value reflects whether the bit is on (magnetic) or off (not magnetic).

Think of it like this: if you wrap lots of copper wire around a rod, then connect each end of the wire to the two poles of a battery, the rod will be magnetized and pick up iron. When you take one of the wires off of the battery, it’s no longer a magnet. You’ve turned it on and then off. There are only those two choices. That’s binary system (bi = two), and it also demonstrates the relationship between electricity and magnetism, a recurring computer principle. For more about how your computer computes with binary code.

To put it simply:

A byte is composed of 8 bits. Similar to the bit, the value of a byte is stored on the hard drive as either above or below a designated level of electrical (therefore magnetic) charge in a single capacitor. Half a byte (4 bits) is called a nibble. [Sometimes, the term octet is used for an 8 bit unit instead of a byte.] Also, in many systems, 4 - 8-bit bytes form a 32 bit word (and sometimes a half-word 16 bits long).

A kilobyte is 1024 bytes (Why exactly 1024 bytes? Because binary computers count in twos, so 1024 is the closest power of 2 to 1000 (2 to 10th power). Click HERE for more information about this). A megabyte is approximately 1 million bytes (actually, it’s 1,024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes, see the comparison charts below). Similarly, a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes (1024 megabytes, 1,048,576 kilobytes, 1,073,741,824 bytes); and a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes.


A petabyte is 1024 terabytes. An exabyte is 1024 petabytes. And a zetabyte is 1024 exabytes. The largest current unit of measurement for computer data is the yottabyte, which is 1024 zetabytes.

GENERAL DISTINCTION:

Data SPEEDS are usually described in terms of BITS:

1,024 bits = 1 Kilobit

1,024Kb = 1 Megabit

1,024Mb = 1 Gigabit

1,024Gb = 1 Terabit


Data STORAGE is usually described in terms of BYTES:

8 bits = 1 byte

1,024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte

1,024KB = 1 Megabyte

1,024MB = 1 Gigabyte

1,024GB = 1 Terabyte

So, for example, a 10 Gbps connection would allow you to transfer 75GB of data over the course of a minute, or the equivalent of about 110 full CDs worth of music.