What does KB mean in computer terms mean?

Answer 1

Depending on the context, it has several possible meanings. It's capitalization is supposed to differentiate between the meanings, but many abbreviations in the computer world are misused.

kb (all lower-case) officially stands for kilobit- 103 or 1000 bits. It should be, but usually isn't, written as kbit to avoid confusion between a bit (a single piece of digital data) and a byte (8 bits), both of which can be abbreviated b. It's used almost exclusively when referring to data transmission speeds, as in "The modem transmitted at 53 kbits/second (or 53 kbs)".

kB (capital B) stands for kilobyte (103 or 1000 bytes).

KB (all caps) also stands for kilobyte but in binary terms (210 or 1024 bytes), used primarily in reference to an amount of data in the computer world.

The confusion between metric and binary kilo- comes from early computer scientists who used the metric prefix kilo-because 1024 is close to 1000. They didn't think their work would become common enough knowledge that it would matter, so amongst themselves 1024 bytes became a kilobyte. Their work, however, became common knowledge. To eliminate the confusion, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has established the kibi- (from kilo and binary) to be used when referring to a value of 1024 (210). This means that a KB should now be a kibibyte.

KB is also sometimes used for Knowledge Base, as in "The Microsoft Hotfix is KB910245".

Answer 2

KB means KiloByte.

It is a measure of data. A bit is a binary digit, a 1 or a 0

A Byte is 8 bits

A KiloByte is 1024 Bytes