Why does my 1 TB drive show 931 GB?

Manufacturer uses decimal (1 TB = 10¹² bytes) but Windows displays binary (1 TiB = 2⁴⁰). Not a scam, just two conventions.

Difference between KB and KiB?

KB = 1,000 bytes (SI), KiB = 1,024 bytes (IEC). The lowercase 'i' was introduced in 1999 to disambiguate, but it's rarely used colloquially.

How many bytes in a 1-hour Full HD video?

Roughly 2-3 GB for medium quality, 5-8 GB for high quality depending on codec and bitrate.

Conversions

Bytes converter

Convert between bytes, kilo, mega, giga, tera and petabytes. Two modes: binary (1024) and decimal (1000).

How to use this tool

Byte conversion has a famous pitfall: is 1 KB = 1,000 or 1,024 bytes? Strictly, 1 KB = 1,000 and 1 KiB (kibibyte) = 1,024. In practice: hard drives advertise in base 1,000 (the gap between "1 TB" sold and what your OS shows), while RAM and most OSes use 1,024. The tool offers both.

Concrete examples

1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (binary)
1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (decimal)
500 GB advertised ≈ 465 GiB actual on a disk

Frequently asked questions

Why does my 1 TB drive show 931 GB?: Manufacturer uses decimal (1 TB = 10¹² bytes) but Windows displays binary (1 TiB = 2⁴⁰). Not a scam, just two conventions.
Difference between KB and KiB?: KB = 1,000 bytes (SI), KiB = 1,024 bytes (IEC). The lowercase 'i' was introduced in 1999 to disambiguate, but it's rarely used colloquially.
How many bytes in a 1-hour Full HD video?: Roughly 2-3 GB for medium quality, 5-8 GB for high quality depending on codec and bitrate.