Decimal and binary ladders side by side
- 1 TB = 1,000 GB decimal = 0.909 TiB binary
- 1 TiB = 1,024 GiB = 1.0995 TB decimal
- 2 TB = 2,000 GB displayed as 1,862.65 GiB
- 4 TB = 4,000 GB displayed as 3,725.29 GiB
- 8 TB = 8,000 GB displayed as 7,450.58 GiB
What you can actually store
A terabyte is roughly 250,000 12 MP photos, or about 440 hours of 1080p video at 5 Mbps, or 88 hours of 4K30 at 25 Mbps, or a small business's documents for many years. In binary display those counts fall by about 7% — the same drive, a slightly different arithmetic.
Budgeting backups with the right unit
Backup tools usually count in binary while cloud plans bill in decimal, so a “1 TB” cloud tier stores a local library of 931 GiB exactly — not more. If a plan must cover a 950 GiB library, choose a 1.25 TB tier (1,250 GB decimal) rather than trusting a round number to absorb the gap.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many GB in 1 TB?
1,000 GB decimal on the label, or 1,024 GB in binary terms (1 TiB).
How many GB in 2 TB?
2,000 GB decimal, displayed as 1,862.65 GiB — about 1,862 GB in Windows labelling.
Is 1 TB a thousand or a thousand and twenty-four GB?
Both, depending on convention: SI says 1,000, IEC binary says 1,024. Storage is sold with the SI definition.
How many MB in a TB?
About one million decimal megabytes (10⁶ MB) or 1,048,576 MiB in binary.
More tools mentioned in this guide
TB to GB Converter
Terabytes to gigabytes, including the 931 GiB reality of 1 TB drives
GB to TB Converter
Gigabytes to terabytes for drive and cloud planning
Hard Drive Capacity Calculator
Why a 1 TB drive shows 931 GB — exact usable capacity math
Storage Capacity Calculator
How many photos, songs, videos or documents fit on any drive