What Is GB in a Hard Drive?

Every data bit, of each gigabyte on a hard drive, holds either the value 0 or 1.

An essential piece of hardware, the hard drive is used for storing all kinds of data. Everything from the smallest image files to large operating systems is stored on them. A gigabyte is the measurement for the amount of data that can be stored on a hard drive.

Design

The smallest measurement of data on a hard drive is a bit. While bits are too small to be used for storing anything on their own, combined together they make larger units of storage, such as bytes, megabytes and gigabytes.

Size

A group of 8 bits is equal to 1 byte. A GB is defined as 1,073,741,824 bytes. This byte size is often rounded off as 1 GB equaling 1 billion bytes. The uppercase "B" in the abbreviation "GB" for gigabytes refers to bytes and is not to be mistaken with the abbreviation for bits, which is a lower case "b."

Origin

The term Giga is a Greek-originated word that means giant. Its metric symbol is the letter "G," representing the number 1 billion in the International System of Units.

References

• Search Storage: Gigabyte
• Indiana University: What Are Bits, Bytes, and Other Units of Measure for Digital Information?
• Word Info: Giga

Resources

• DUX Computer Digest: A Brief History of the Hard Disk Drive