1 gigabyte (1000³) = 0.93132257 GiB
1 GB = 0.931323 GiB · type math like (12*4)+6.5
GB to GiB explains why a 512 GB SSD shows 476 GB in Windows. It is used when partitioning drives, sizing cloud volumes or checking advertised capacity.
Partitioning drives is a practical use. If you want a 100 GB partition but your tool uses GiB, enter 93.13 GiB. Conversely, asking for 100 GiB gives you 107.4 GB.
Advertised phone storage is a frequent source of confusion. A 128 GB phone holds 119.2 GiB before the operating system, and iOS or Android may use another 10 GB or more.
Game consoles: a PlayStation 5 with an 825 GB SSD shows about 768 GiB in raw terms, and roughly 667 GB of that is usable for games.
Hard drive manufacturers have used decimal GB since the 1980s, while operating systems like Windows report binary units. Lawsuits in the 2000s led makers to add disclaimers that 1 GB equals one billion bytes.
Virtual machine images are often sized in GiB. A 20 GB disk image from a decimal-based tool may need to be set as 18.63 GiB in a hypervisor that uses binary units, or it will be slightly larger than planned.
Memory cards and USB drives show the same effect. A 32 GB card appears as 29.8 GiB, a 256 GB card as 238.4 GiB and a 1 TB card as 931.3 GiB. Camera makers estimate shot counts using the smaller binary figure, so the number of photos you can take is lower than a decimal calculation would suggest.
Developers sizing Docker volumes or Kubernetes persistent volumes need to watch units closely. Kubernetes accepts both G (decimal) and Gi (binary), so requesting 10G gives 10,000,000,000 bytes while 10Gi gives 10,737,418,240 bytes, a difference of about 737 MB.
Cloud database storage is often sold in GB but monitored in GiB, so a 500 GB volume reports 465.7 GiB in metrics dashboards. Alerts set at 450 GiB therefore trigger at about 96.6% full, not 90% as you might expect.
To check, the GiB figure should be about 7% smaller than the GB figure. 1,000 GB should be close to 931 GiB, and 128 GB close to 119 GiB. If your result is larger, you multiplied instead of dividing. Neither number is wrong; they simply count the same bytes in different units.
GiB = GB × 0.9313225746
Reverse: 1 GiB = 1.0737418 GB.
How much will a 512 GB SSD show in Windows?
Answer: 512 GB = 476.8 GiB.
| GB | GiB |
|---|---|
| 1 GB | 0.93132257 GiB |
| 2 GB | 1.8626451 GiB |
| 3 GB | 2.7939677 GiB |
| 4 GB | 3.7252903 GiB |
| 5 GB | 4.6566129 GiB |
| 6 GB | 5.5879354 GiB |
| 7 GB | 6.519258 GiB |
| 8 GB | 7.4505806 GiB |
| 9 GB | 8.3819032 GiB |
| 10 GB | 9.3132257 GiB |
| 11 GB | 10.244548 GiB |
| 12 GB | 11.175871 GiB |
| 13 GB | 12.107193 GiB |
| 14 GB | 13.038516 GiB |
| 15 GB | 13.969839 GiB |
| GB | GiB |
|---|---|
| 16 GB | 14.901161 GiB |
| 17 GB | 15.832484 GiB |
| 18 GB | 16.763806 GiB |
| 19 GB | 17.695129 GiB |
| 20 GB | 18.626451 GiB |
| 25 GB | 23.283064 GiB |
| 30 GB | 27.939677 GiB |
| 40 GB | 37.252903 GiB |
| 50 GB | 46.566129 GiB |
| 75 GB | 69.849193 GiB |
| 100 GB | 93.132257 GiB |
| 250 GB | 232.83064 GiB |
| 500 GB | 465.66129 GiB |
| 1 000 GB | 931.32257 GiB |
A 512 GB SSD is 476.8 GiB.
A 64 GB USB stick is 59.6 GiB.
A 1,000 GB drive is 931.3 GiB.
No space is lost; the bytes are the same, only the unit differs.
The factor is 1.073741824 (1.024³), not 1.024.
File systems use some space too, so usable space is slightly less than the GiB figure.
A gigabyte (GB) is 1,000,000,000 bytes, using the decimal SI prefix giga.
Origin. Decimal prefixes for storage became standard in the hard drive industry in the 1980s and were confirmed by the IEC in 1998.
Used today. Drive advertising and data transfer.
A gibibyte (GiB) is 1,073,741,824 bytes, which is 2³⁰ bytes.
Origin. The IEC introduced binary prefixes like gibi- in 1998 to end the ambiguity of 'gigabyte'.
Used today. Operating system disk reporting and memory.
256 GB is 238.4 GiB, and the system uses some space.
0.9313 GiB.
1,862.6 GiB.
Yes. Manufacturers state that 1 GB = 1 billion bytes in the fine print, following SI usage.