Kilobytes to Mebibytes (kB to MiB)
1 kilobyte equals 0.0009536743164 mebibytes (rounded).
How to convert kilobytes to mebibytes
To convert kilobytes to mebibytes, multiply the number of kilobytes by 0.0009536743164. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply mebibytes by 1,048.576.
mebibytes = kilobytes × 0.0009536743164
Example: 10 kilobytes = 0.009536743164 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
Kilobyte (kB)
1,000 bytes in the SI (decimal) definition. Older software and Windows sometimes use KB to mean 1,024 bytes; see kibibyte.
Few units have had two meanings for so long. By the mid-1960s most computers used binary addressing, so memory sizes came in powers of two and engineers borrowed kilo to mean 1,024. IBM documentation for the System/360 in 1964 used an uppercase K for 1,024. Hard disk makers took a different path from the start. The IEC later settled the question: kilobyte, symbol kB, means 1,000 bytes, and 1,024 bytes is a kibibyte.
Floppy disks show the muddle. The Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes unformatted and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, the decimal way, while a 1978 Tandon double-density disk held 368,640 bytes, or 360 times 1,024, and was sold as 360 KB. Windows still divides by 1,024, so a 65,536-byte file appears as 64 KB there, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard and later would call it 66 kB. A kilobyte is also tiny: Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is 12,843 bytes.
1 kilobyte = 1,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; 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 kilobytes (reverse)
- Kilobytes to bytes
- Kilobytes to megabytes
- Kilobytes to gigabytes
- Kilobytes to terabytes
- Kilobytes to bits
- Kilobytes to petabytes
- Kilobytes to kibibytes
- Kilobytes to gibibytes
- Kilobytes to tebibytes
- Kilobytes to kilobits
- Kilobytes to megabits
- Kilobytes to gigabits
- Bytes to mebibytes
- Megabytes to mebibytes
- Gigabytes 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.