MB

What is a Megabyte?

Digital Storage Unit

Definition

A megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital information equal to 1,000,000 bytes (decimal) or 1,048,576 bytes (binary). It is commonly used to measure file sizes.

Popular Megabyte Conversions

Most common conversions from Megabytes

1 MB = 8,000,000 b Megabyte to Bits 1 MB = 1,000,000 B Megabyte to Bytes 1 MB = 1,000 KB Megabyte to Kilobytes 1 MB = 0.001 GB Megabyte to Gigabytes 1 MB = 0.000001 TB Megabyte to Terabytes 1 MB = 0.000000001 PB Megabyte to Petabytes

History

The term 'megabyte' emerged in the 1960s with the growth of computing. The prefix 'mega' means million, though in computing it often refers to 2^20 (1,048,576) bytes.

Common Uses

  • Document and image file sizes
  • Music file sizes (MP3s are typically 3-5 MB)
  • Email attachment limits
  • App and software sizes

Fun Facts

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The first hard drive (1956) had just 5 MB capacity and weighed 1 ton

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A floppy disk held 1.44 MB

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1 MB can store about 500 pages of plain text

All Megabyte Conversions

Megabytes to Bits MB → b Megabytes to Bytes MB → B Megabytes to Kilobytes MB → KB Megabytes to Gigabytes MB → GB Megabytes to Terabytes MB → TB Megabytes to Petabytes MB → PB Megabytes to Kibibytes MB → KiB Megabytes to Mebibytes MB → MiB Megabytes to Gibibytes MB → GiB Megabytes to Tebibytes MB → TiB

Related Units

KB Kilobyte GB Gigabyte TB Terabyte B Byte