Bits to Mebibytes (bit to MiB)
1 bit equals 1.192092896×10⁻⁷ mebibytes (rounded).
How to convert bits to mebibytes
To convert bits to mebibytes, multiply the number of bits by 1.192092896×10⁻⁷. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply mebibytes by 8,388,608.
mebibytes = bits × 1.192092896×10⁻⁷
Example: 10 bits = 0.000001192092896 mebibytes.
Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.
About these units
Bit (bit)
The smallest unit of digital information: a single 0 or 1. Eight bits make a byte.
Bit is short for binary digit, and the word was coined by John W. Tukey. He shortened the phrase in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon first used it in print in his 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and credited Tukey with the word. The idea predates the name: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic measure of information in 1928, and punched cards, invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon in 1732 and developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, already stored one bit per hole position.
A bit holds one of two values, written 0 or 1, and everything digital is built from them. Eight bits make a byte, so a bit is one eighth of a byte. Symbols for the unit are not settled: the IEC standard uses bit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, with uppercase B reserved for the byte. The difference matters because internet speeds and file sizes are quoted in different units.
1 bit = 0.125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Mebibyte (MiB)
Exactly 1,048,576 bytes (2²⁰). The binary megabyte, about 4.9% larger than a decimal megabyte.
Mebi, from mega with the binary i added, belongs to the same 1998 IEC family as kibi and gibi, which the IEC published as Amendment 2 to IEC 60027-2 in January 1999. NIST gives the factor as 2 to the twentieth, or 1,048,576 bytes. It was meant to settle a real argument: once storage makers and telecom engineers used decimal values and programmers used binary ones, megabyte came to mean different amounts.
A mebibyte is about 4.9 percent larger than a megabyte, and the standard is now IEC 80000-13. The classic example is the 1.44 MB floppy, whose true capacity is 1,440 KiB, which is 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Like other IEC symbols, MiB is rarely used outside tools such as KDE and Qt-based applications, while Windows and RAM labels use MB for the binary quantity.
1 mebibyte = 1,048,576 bytes (exactly).
Sources: NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Mebibyte
Related conversions
- Mebibytes to bits (reverse)
- Bits to bytes
- Bits to kilobytes
- Bits to megabytes
- Bits to gigabytes
- Bits to terabytes
- Bits to petabytes
- Bits to kibibytes
- Bits to gibibytes
- Bits to tebibytes
- Bits to kilobits
- Bits to megabits
- Bits to gigabits
- Bytes to mebibytes
- Kilobytes to mebibytes
- Megabytes to mebibytes
- Gigabytes to mebibytes
- Terabytes to mebibytes
- Petabytes to mebibytes
- Kibibytes to mebibytes
- Gibibytes to mebibytes
- Tebibytes to mebibytes
- Kilobits to mebibytes
- Megabits to mebibytes
- Gigabits to mebibytes
See all digital storage units.