From the course: Computer Science Principles: Digital Information

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File sizes and bytes

File sizes and bytes

From the course: Computer Science Principles: Digital Information

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File sizes and bytes

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- The more and more information you need to store, the more bits you need to store it. Data has a unit of measure just like distance. You measure distance using inches, feet, yards, and miles. And in metric you use meters, centimeters, and kilometers. The prefixes that are used in metric like kilo are also used to help measure the size of data. Let's start with storage and size first. We know that the smallest amount of storage is a single bit. A single one or a zero off or on. We group these in sets of eight bits, which is called a byte but what's smaller than a byte? Well a nibble of course. A nibble is half of a byte, or four bits. The byte is the base form of measurement for data size. The same as meters when we measure distance. From this base size we can use prefixes to show magnitude of size. Measurement and data size is done by multiples of 1,000. But not in the 1,000 that you're used to. Instead of 1,000, the number 1,024 is used. Why? Because 1,000 is decimal or uses a base…

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