Gigabytes to Mebibytes (GB to MiB)
1 gigabyte equals 953.6743164 mebibytes (rounded).
How to convert gigabytes to mebibytes
To convert gigabytes to mebibytes, multiply the number of gigabytes by 953.6743164. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply mebibytes by 0.001048576.
mebibytes = gigabytes × 953.6743164
Example: 10 gigabytes = 9,536.743164 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
Gigabyte (GB)
1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal). Storage manufacturers and phone makers use this definition.
The gigabyte is where the decimal-versus-binary dispute turned into lawsuits. Drive makers advertise capacity in decimal units, so a 500 GB drive holds 500 billion bytes, but Windows reports sizes in binary units and shows about 465.7 of what it labels GB for the same drive. Early challenges against Western Digital and Seagate were settled, with Western Digital adding disclaimers that usable capacity may differ from the advertised figure.
A 2019 lawsuit was decided in the manufacturers' favor, with the court relying on the decimal definition. For scale, one gigabyte holds roughly an hour of standard-definition video at 2.2 Mbit/s. A single-layer DVD+R holds about 4.7 GB and a single-layer Blu-ray about 25 GB. RAM is still often sized in binary gigabytes, which the IEC would call gibibytes.
1 gigabyte = 1,000,000,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Gigabyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; Wikipedia: Gibibyte
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 gigabytes (reverse)
- Gigabytes to bytes
- Gigabytes to kilobytes
- Gigabytes to megabytes
- Gigabytes to terabytes
- Gigabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to petabytes
- Gigabytes to kibibytes
- Gigabytes to gibibytes
- Gigabytes to tebibytes
- Gigabytes to kilobits
- Gigabytes to megabits
- Gigabytes to gigabits
- Bytes to mebibytes
- Kilobytes to mebibytes
- Megabytes to mebibytes
- Terabytes to mebibytes
- Bits 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.