The megabyte (MB) is an established IT unit of measurement for file sizes, derived from the Greek words “mega” (million) and “byte”. Complex digital processes require large quantities of bytes, which are grouped into different size units.
One megabyte corresponds to 1 million bytes in the decimal system and is used to measure file sizes, storage capacities and data consumption. Depending on the interpretation, the size of a megabyte can be either 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes, whereby 1024 kilobytes summarize 1 megabyte.
The bit forms the basis of the megabyte, as the smallest unit of information in IT with the states “0” or “1”. Despite gigabytes and terabytes, the megabyte remains relevant when specifying file sizes, but is rarely used for the storage capacity of data, but rather to describe the file size.