Mebibytes to Bytes (MiB to B)

1 mebibyte equals 1,048,576 bytes exactly.

How to convert mebibytes to bytes

To convert mebibytes to bytes, multiply the number of mebibytes by 1,048,576. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bytes by 9.536743164×10⁻⁷ (rounded).

bytes = mebibytes × 1,048,576

Example: 10 mebibytes = 10,485,760 bytes.

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

Mebibyte (MiB)

ComputingCurrent unit

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

Byte (B)

ComputingCurrent unit

Eight bits. The basic addressable unit of memory and storage.

Werner Buchholz coined the word byte in June 1956 while working on the IBM Stretch computer; the earliest supporting document is dated 11 June 1956. He respelled bite on purpose, in his words to avoid accidental mutation to bit. At that stage a byte was any group of one to six bits, and a move to eight bits was considered in August 1956 and built into the design soon after. Louis Dooley later claimed he had coined the term around 1956 or 1957 on the SAGE project at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where it meant groups of four bits, but Fred Brooks credited Buchholz.

IBM's System/360 adopted the eight-bit byte, and its success made that size the standard. The symbol is a capital B, and the unambiguous alternative is octet, a word used in protocol standards such as RFC 791. A byte can hold 256 distinct values, enough for a letter of the alphabet in a simple character set, which is why files and memory addresses are counted in bytes.

The byte is the reference unit for digital storage on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Byte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.