A kbyte, also known as kilobyte, is a unit of digital information storage commonly used to measure the size of computer files, data transfer rates, and computer memory capacity. It is defined as 1024 bytes in the binary system, where each byte consists of 8 bits.
The term "kbyte" is derived from the words "kilo" meaning one thousand and "byte" referring to a sequence of digital information or data. The prefix "kilo-" denotes the multiplication of the base unit by 1000 in the metric system, however, when used in computer science and information technology, the binary system is generally used to measure storage capacities and data transfer rates.
One kbyte is equivalent to 1024 bytes, or 2^10 (2 raised to the power of 10) bytes. This is due to the fact that computers operate in binary, where powers of 2 are commonly used. This makes kbyte slightly larger than a kilobyte in the metric sense, which is precisely 1000 bytes.
Kbytes are often used to indicate the capacity of computer memory, storage devices such as hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs), as well as file sizes. For example, a text document with a size of 20 kbytes would contain approximately 20,480 bytes of information. Similarly, data transfer rates can be measured in kbytes per second (KB/s), where higher numbers indicate faster transfer speeds.
