How Much Data Is That? Note: The information shown below uses measures associated specifically with data. For example, a kilo-anything is 1000 . . . Except that when it is a kilobyte, it is 1024, an even power of two. See my page on this topic here. Whenever we discuss quantities of data, we tend to do it in the abstract. The following table shows various quantities of bytes, in each power of ten. All the examples are approximate and are rounded. Bytes (8 bits) 0.1 bytes: A single yes/no decision (actually 0.125 bytes, but I rounded)1 byte: One character 2 bytes:5 bytes10 bytes: One word (a word of language, not a computer word)20 bytes:50 bytes:100 bytes: Telegram; two punched computer (Hollerith) cards200 bytes:500 bytes: Kilobyte 1,024 bytes; 210; approx. 1,000 or 103 Megabyte 1,048,576 bytes; 220; approx 1,000,000 or 106 Gigabyte 1,073,741,824 bytes; 230; approx 1,000,000,000 or 109 Terabyte 1,099,511,627,776 or 240; approx. 1,000,000,000,000 or 1012 Feel free to link to this page.
