Since we are all living in a digital setting we often hear or see terms and abbreviations that sound familiar or that we partially recognize. However, there are moments when you start wondering whether you employed them appropriately, at the correct time and in the proper context. That is why one wants to clarify the meaning of such terms with the help of Google themselves.
Indeed the difference between GB and Gb is the perfect example of the statement above. Of course, you already know that both abbreviations are used in the IT world, but you still might be wondering why the first one is written with a capital letter while the second one is not. It is a little confusing for people without an IT background to easily differentiate these technical terms. The following article is dedicated to explaining what these terms are and how one can distinguish them in terms of their real difference and relevance.
What does the acronym of GB and Gb mean?
However, before we proceed any further let’s clarify what both abbreviations mean. Here, both the terms GB and Gb are represented as units of measurement. It is easy to come across both of them when discussing the hosting industry since they are both associated with digital storage capacity. But, this is the point at which their similarities can be said to end.
What is Gigabyte?
GB is the shortened form which is also recognized as GB or Gbyte for Gigabyte. It refers to random access memory or hard drive storage capacity of any device, be it a computer, laptop, or elsewhere you can keep different categories of files/data. Another place where it can often be found is the hosting services – it specifies the area provided if you decide to rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated hosting plan and Internet connection.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary:
A gigabyte is a measurement unit of computer information storage and communication that is equal to 1/1000 megabytes or 1000/1024 hundreds of millions of bytes. This can also mean a computer storage unit that is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes, although this is approximately 0.5 GB or about 1000 MB.
It indicates that one Gigabyte in capacity equals one billion bytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes. It appears after megabytes (MB) on the scaling and before terabytes (TB). One Terabyte is equal to 1000 GB of storage space.
The following are some of the other common “standard” sizes in gigabytes;
- The DVDs can store 4.7 gigabytes.
- Single-layer Blu-rays store about 4.4 billion bytes of information or about 25 GB of data.
- However, SSDs can store up to a few hundred GB of data; beyond 1,000 GB, the capacity is measured in terabytes and is housed in a hard drive.
- SSD currently has a storage capacity of 128, 256, 512 GB(or less up to date)
- Optic fibre bandwidth speed, which can go up to the gigabyte per second for download/upload speed
- Video RAM is usually known as system RAM and may be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 GB.
What is a Gigabit?
A gigabit is quite similar to a gigabyte since they both handle issues with digital storage capacity as well as data transfer rates. Bytes and bits are quite similar in concept but just slightly different; thus, people are always wondering how the two differ from each other. In other words – one byte means exactly eight bits.
According to the tech terms definition:
Gigabit is 109 or 1,000,000,000 bits which is equal to 1,000 megabits or 1 billion bits. So, concerning the giga-byte (GB) which is a standard for measuring storage space, the gigabit (Gb) is 125 MB or eight times less than a GB. Furthermore, the term Gigabits is mainly applicable to data transmission speeds of Local Area Networks, (LANs) Ethernet, and Input/Output (I/O) links. The exact measurement is Mbps which expands to Megabits per second and thus, the larger measurement is Gbps which stands for Gigabits per second.
Why do we frequently mix up these two terms?
The two terms may look slightly different but are almost identical and therefore can easily be confused by anyone who is not so well IT literate. It is not less customer unfriendly when hosting companies attempt to ‘market’, or sell their storage services using the terms and the abbreviations interchangeably.
So that you can be deceived in terms of the capacity of the storage area that you are being charged for. In order to avoid such inconveniences it is important to pay attention to details such as when they have used gigabits as measuring units in the hosting plan and one ends up having less storage capacity than expected, eight times less!
distinguish Gigabyte from Gigabit?
In other words, the term Gigabytes is primarily applied to measure data storage and download and upload Internet speed, while the term Gigabits denotes the speed of data transferring in the local networks. Typically, disk space, RAM of the computer or bandwidth capacity is quantified in Gigabytes (GB) by the hosting firms.
For instance, if your hosting provider measures bandwidth in gigabits, you may realize that you are getting 8 times less storage space, RAM, or bandwidth than a gigabyte.
Final Thoughts:
The distinction between gigabits and gigabytes can be very important when it comes to Internet connection speeds and storage capacities. Gigabits are used to quantify the capacity to transfer data in a given amount of time, and gigabytes are used to quantify the storage capacity of a data device. This knowledge of how the internet operates enables choices to be made regarding the internet plans to purchase, storage devices, and ways in which data is processed and utilised.
FAQs - Gigabit Vs Gigabyte
There is a significant difference between gigabit internet, which is related to speed, and gigabyte storage which is associated with capacity. Although speed cannot be quantified with storage capacity, obtaining a higher Gbps internet connection implies faster data exchange.
Internet providers employ gigabits for data transfer rate because it is a term used for speed, a unit for how fast data transmits through the network.
To change gigabits to gigabytes, it is basic to divide the number of gigabits by 8. So if it is written as for example 8 GB it means 1 GB.
Yes, you can calculate data usage using gigabits, but gigabytes or terabytes are normally used when referring to data allowance for users.
A megabit (Mb) is 1 million bits whereas a megabyte, (MB) is thousand two hundred and fifty-six and a half million bits or 8 million bytes. The only difference that may be found is that one of the two is likely to be of a greater bit number than the other.
