What is Megabyte (MB)? (Explained)

What is Megabyte (MB)?

A megabyte, or MB, is a unit of measurement for binary data. It is usually used for digital computers or media storage. Mathematically, one MB is equal to 2²⁰ or 10⁶ bytes or one million bytes.

According to the International System of Units (SI), the ‘mega’ prefix is used to denote the 10 multiplier and in the case of binary, this prefix is 1,048,576 bits or 1,024 KB. The differential between the binary and SI measure is about 4.86%.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Megabyte is the measure of storage capacity and data transfer speed, and equals to 10⁶ or one million bytes.
• Megabyte is represented as MB and is larger than a kilobyte and smaller than one gigabyte.
• It is used to measure both real and virtual memory. It is also used to measure different types of files, depending on the file format and compression abilities.
• According to decimal notation, a megabyte is equal to 2²⁰ or 1,048,576 bytes, which is 4.86% more than 1,000,000 bytes.
• One megabyte of data is a fairly large amount, but it is not a unit that is commonly used today since in most cases, the higher multiples of bytes are used nowadays.

Understanding Megabyte (MB)

The term ‘megabyte’ refers to the specific unit for measuring the digital data storage capacity of a device and also the speed at which data can be transferred from the device through an interface.

One megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 (2²⁰) bytes or 1,000,000 (10⁶) bytes. Which one to follow is usually determined by the manufacturer of the particular storage device.

One megabyte is bigger than a kilobyte and therefore comes after it. And it is smaller than a gigabyte and therefore comes before it.

A megabyte is typically abbreviated in different ways such as:

• Mbyte
• meg
• Mbit
• MB

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) incorporated the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2000 to formally approve the SI metric prefixes.

Since then, kilo in KB has been used to represent one thousand bytes, mega in megabyte has been used to represent one million bytes, and so on.

You can get a rough idea about the amount of data one megabyte can contain from the following examples:

• An uncompressed bitmap image of 1 megapixel (roughly 1152 × 864) with 256 colors with 8 bits/pixel color depth
• A normally compressed Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) image of 4 megapixels (roughly 2560 × 1600)
• An uncompressed audio clip of six seconds of 44.1 kHz/16 bit
• A 1-minute lossy compressed audio file of 128 kbit/s MP3
• A regular English book volume of 500 pages with 2000 characters on each page in plain text format

Typically, a human genome sequence consists of about 800 MB of data and the part of DNA that can be compressed to differentiate one person from another is 4 MB.

Conversion

Here is the conversion list of different units with respect to 1,000,000 bytes. All of these units are, however, not used in day-to-day computing.

• The value of one megabyte in a bit (b) will be 0.000000125.
• The value of one megabyte in a Nibble (N) will be 0.000001.
• The value of one megabyte in a byte (B) will be 0.000001.
• The value of one megabyte in a kilobit (Kb) will be 0.000125.
• The value of one megabyte in a kilobyte (KB) will be 0.001.
• The value of one megabyte in a kibibit (Kib) will be 0.000128.
• The value of one megabyte in a kibibyte (KiB) will be 0.001023999476.
• The value of one megabyte in a megabit (Mb) will be 0.125.
• The value of one megabyte in a mebibit (Mib) will be 0.131072.
• The value of one megabyte in a mebibyte (MiB) will be 1.04858.
• The number of megabytes in a gigabit (Gb) will be 125.
• The number of megabytes in a gigabyte (GB) will be 1,000.
• The number of megabytes in a gibibit (Gib) will be 134.218.
• The number of megabytes in a gibibyte (GiB) will be 1,073.74.
• The number of megabytes in a terabit (Tb) will be 125,000.
• The number of megabytes in a terabyte (TB) will be 1,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in a tebibit (Tib) will be 137,439.
• The number of megabytes in a tebibyte (TiB) will be 1,100,000.
• The number of megabytes in a petabit (Pb) will be 125,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in a petabyte (PB) will be 1,000,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in a pebibit (Pib) will be 140,700,000.
• The number of megabytes in a pebibyte (PiB) will be 1,126,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in an exabit (Eb) will be 125,000,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in an exabyte (EB) will be 1,000,000,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in an exbibit (Eib) will be 144,115,188,000.
• The number of megabytes in an exbibyte (EiB) will be 1,152,921,500,000.
• The number of megabytes in a zettabyte (ZB) will be 1,000,000,000,000,000.
• The number of megabytes in a yottabyte (YB) will be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

What are Megabytes Used for?

Megabytes are typically used as a much larger unit of byte for measuring storage capacity of a drive. However, it is also used to measure the speed at which data transfers from the storage device.

Though it is used mainly for measuring data storage capacity and transfer speed, MB is used in a diverse range of measurement contexts as well. A few of these contexts are as follows:

• Media data
• Digitally supported computers
• Memory

It is also used sometimes for software programs, though it largely depends on the file format, drive capabilities and compression abilities.

Typically, a megabyte is a relatively smaller unit for measurement in this era where using gigabytes and terabytes of data is a common event.

However, it had a lot of significance when IBM launched the first computer system with data storage integrated into it in 1956.

This was a huge device, priced at $35,000, with a storage capacity of 5 MB.

With improvements in technology and storage system designs, floppy disks with a storage capacity of up to about 2 MB became common.

With further breakthroughs in the field of digital technologies, today you will hardly find a storage system with its capacity marked in megabytes.

Even the cheapest and most regular Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive will not have less than 4 GB of storage space.

Still, there is no reason to consider that MB is obsolete now as a unit of measurement.

It may not be used commonly for measuring the storage space of the data carriers, but it is still used to measure different file sizes.

Megabytes are typically used to measure the following types of files:

• Text format files
• Video data files
• Bitmap image files
• Compressed or uncompressed audio files

Internet files are also measured in megabytes sometimes. You will often see that the data volumes consumed by you while surfing the internet or while performing other activities online, especially on mobile devices, are expressed in megabytes.

Typically, the mail providers limit sending each attachment along with a mail to 10 MB or 20 MB.

Megabyte is also a very common unit to measure the file sizes used in business or personal computing.

Conclusion

Megabyte is one of the units of measurement within the International System of Units and is typically used to measure the data storage capacity as well as the amount of data being transferred.

However, as it is pointed out in this article, this unit of measurement is also used for other applications and has a different value.