File size measure

Measure

- Legal :* Measure of the Church of England is a law passed by the General Synod and the UK Parliament equivalent of an Act* Measure of the National Assembly for Wales, a law specific to Wales passed by the Welsh Assembly between 2007 and 2011...

s the size

Size

The word size may refer to how big something is. In particular:* Measurement, the process or the result of determining the magnitude of a quantity, such as length or mass, relative to a unit of measurement, such as a meter or a kilogram...

 of a computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 file

Computer file

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...

. Typically it is measured in byte

Byte

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...

s with a prefix

Prefix

A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...

. The actual amount of disk space consumed by the file depends on the file system

File system

A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...

.

The maximum file size a file system supports depends on the number of bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

s reserved to store size information and the total size of the file system. For example, with FAT32

File Allocation Table

File Allocation Table is a computer file system architecture now widely used on many computer systems and most memory cards, such as those used with digital cameras. FAT file systems are commonly found on floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital cameras, and many other portable devices because of...

, the size of one file cannot be equal or larger than 4 GiB

Gibibyte

The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage. The gibibyte unit symbol is GiB....

.

Some common file size units are:

• 1 KiB
  Kibibyte
  The kibibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for quantities of digital information. The binary prefix kibi means 1024; therefore, 1 kibibyte is . The unit symbol for the kibibyte is KiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1999 and has been accepted for use...
  
  = 1,024 bytes

• 1 MiB
  Mebibyte
  The mebibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The binary prefix mebi means 220, therefore 1 mebibyte is . The unit symbol for the mebibyte is MiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 2000 and has been accepted for use by all major...
  
   = 1,048,576 bytes

• 1 GiB
  Gibibyte
  The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage. The gibibyte unit symbol is GiB....
  
  = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Conversion table

Name	Symbol	Binary Measurement	Decimal Measurement	Number of Bytes	Equal to
KiloByte	KB	210	103	1,024	1,024 bytes
MegaByte	MB	220	106	1,048,576	1,024 KB
GigaByte	GB	230	109	1,073,741,824	1,024 MB
TeraByte	TB	240	1012	1,099,511,627,776	1,024 GB
PetaByte	PB	250	1015	1,125,899,906,842,624	1,024 TB
ExaByte	EB	260	1018	1,152,921,504,606,846,976	1,024 PB
ZettaByte	ZB	270	1021	1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424	1,024 EB
YottaByte	YB	280	1024	1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176	1,024 ZB