What is the difference between megabyte mebibyte?

Answer 1

megabyte (note correct spelling) = 106 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes

mebibyte = 220 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes

Historically megabyte has been used to mean both values (and others, such as 1,1024,000).

Mebibyte is unambiguously the binary-based value, but it is not widely used and megabyte continues to be used to for both meanings.

Answer 2

It's the new standards-based unit short for Mega-Binary-Byte (MiB). It's used because the base 2 representation misuses the terms mega and kilo. The base 2 kilobyte is not 1000 bytes as expected but 1024.

We usually take that for granted and say - OK, accepted. However as an SI prefix we need to use the terms correctly. So instead of 1024 bytes being a kilobyte, it's now called a kibibyte.

This is taking a while to adopt, because we are used to saying kilobyte and megabyte, plus they are way easier on the tongue! however eventually, when referring to a datasize of 1024 bytes we will call it a kibibyte. Kilobyte will be reserved for 1000 and megabyte for 1000000 bytes.

Answer 3

The term "megabyte" originally meant 2^20 (1024 * 1024 = 1048576), and kilobyte meant 2^10 (1024). Then people who sold hard disks and other storage decided they could just count a megabyte as a 1,000,000 bytes, and make less storage sound like more, because that's how the prefix "mega" is usually used.

Since that's a pretty sound argument, two different values existed for kilobyte, megabyte, and gigabyte, until the newer set won out, and they decided to create new terms for 2^10, 2^20, and 2^30. They decided on kibibyte, mebibyte, and gibibyte. The "bi" syllable injected into each of the words is to allude to the word "binary," because they are all powers of 2, and thus the maximum values able to be represented by certain numbers of binary digits, or "bits."

The problem is that not everyone has accepted the new labels, so sometimes a megabyte means 1,000,000 bytes, and sometimes it means 1,048,576 bytes. If you're buying a hard drive or something similar, it will probably tell you, and it will probably be 1,000,000.

In conclusion, a mebibyte is always = 1,048,576 bytes, but a megabyte could be either that same value or 1,000,000, depending on the situation. Sometimes you just need to do the math yourself.