GiB to GB Converter
| GiB shown | GB sold | The drive |
|---|---|---|
| 465.66 | 500 | the half-terabyte box |
| 931.32 | 1000 | the 1 TB mystery |
| 1862.65 | 2000 | the 2 TB version |
A gibibyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes - 1024 cubed - while a gigabyte is a clean billion; the gap between them is why a drive sold as one terabyte shows up as 931 GB in the computer. Both units are correct, both are standardized, and they answer to different conventions: the drive box counts in decimal powers of 1000, the operating system counts in binary powers of 1024.
The converter bridges the two dialects in both directions, with the ladder from kilobyte to terabyte on each side. Nothing was stolen from your drive - the bytes are all there, wearing a different label than the box promised, and the arithmetic below is the whole explanation.
How to use
- Type the GiB your operating system reports - GB appears instantly, or run the reverse from the number on the drive box.
- Use the table for the shopping math: a 500 GB drive shows about 465 GiB, a 1 TB drive 931 GiB, a 2 TB drive 1863.
- RAM and file systems live in GiB; storage marketing and network speeds live in GB - knowing which side a number came from ends the confusion permanently.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my 1 TB drive show only 931 GB?
The drive holds a true trillion bytes - one terabyte in the decimal sense - but the operating system divides that trillion by 1024 three times (gigabytes as it defines them are 1024-cubed each), landing at about 931 of its GB. Nothing is missing: it is one number read in two dialects. Divide any advertised decimal capacity by 1.0737 to predict what the computer will report, which is what this converter does.
What is the difference between GB and GiB?
The base: a gigabyte is 10 to the ninth bytes - a clean billion, the SI prefix doing its decimal job; a gibibyte is 2 to the thirtieth - 1024 cubed, the binary counting computers do naturally. They differ by about 7.4 percent, a gap that compounds up the ladder until terabytes and tebibytes are nearly a tenth apart. NIST introduced the -ibi prefixes in 1998 precisely to end the ambiguity; the market just has not finished switching.
Which units does RAM versus storage use?
RAM is binary to the bone - a '16 GB' stick is truly 16 GiB, because memory is addressed in binary pages - while storage boxes and network speeds use decimal GB and Mb. File systems are the mixed zone: Windows reports GiB but labels them GB, macOS switched to decimal GB for drives, and Linux shows whichever tool you asked. This is why the same file reports different sizes on different machines.
How big is a tebibyte compared to a terabyte?
A tebibyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes; a terabyte is a flat trillion - the tebibyte is almost ten percent larger. The ladder in the table lines them up: 1 TiB = 1.0995 TB, so a '2 TiB' drive would be marketed as 2.2 TB if anyone sold drives that way. Network equipment, for its part, counts in decimal Mb always - which is the other half of the broadband confusion.
Is one convention cheating me?
No - both are honest, standardized and verified: the decimal prefixes come from SI and the binary prefixes from IEC, and drive capacities measured in decimal match exactly what the box says. The friction is purely a labeling mismatch between industries. The only real-world loss is psychological: about 7.4 percent of the number you thought you bought, handed back the moment you learn to read it in both dialects.