Difference between kilobite and kilobyte

Answer 1

A bit is a single numeric value, either '1' or '0', that encodes a single unit of digital information. A byte is a sequence of bits; usually eight bits equal one byte.

So, 8 kilobites would be equal to 1 kilobyte.

Answer 2

A kilobit (Kb) is a unit of digital information equal to 1,000 bits, often used for measuring data transfer rates. In contrast, a kilobyte (KB) is a unit of digital information equal to 1,024 bytes, typically used for measuring storage capacity. This difference arises from the use of base 10 (for kilobit) versus base 2 (for kilobyte) in computing.

Answer 3

A byte is 8 bits.

So a kilobit is 1000 bits, and a kilobyte is 8000 bits.

Typically, kilobits is denoted kbit, and kilobyte is denoted KB. However many do not use these correctly.

Kilo is a measurement in multiple of 1000. As such, it has often been inappropriately used for measuring memory in computers, and storage, when in fact computers operate on multiples of 1024. See below.

A kibibit is is 1024 bits, and a kibibyte is 8192 bits.

A kibibit and kibibyte are denoted as kibit and kiB, sometimes as kib and kibB. This is the correct method of measuring most computer storage media, and is one of the main reasons why hard drives are mis-reported in size. A 500 GB harddrive may have 500 billion bytes, but in reality this is only 465 GB to the computer.

The discrepency is the result of our base-10 decimal numeric system, compared to the base-2 binary numeric system computers use.