How do you measure storage or memory size in computers?

There are three types of memory, video, storage and RAM. Storage memory is on your hard drive and is used to store everything that's software or virtual on your computer, such as programs, files, settings, etc. If it's part of your computer and you can't throw it out of the window, it's software. If you throw it out of the window and it comes back, it's a cat. Anyways, video memory is memory that is set aside specifically for usage by your video card or onboard video (this doesn't take any away from your RAM or hard drive). It functions much like RAM. Finally, RAM acts as a scratchpad for your computer, keeping track of everything that's not "finalized" or saved on your hard drive (everything in RAM, by the way, is lost when your computer is turned off). All three are seperate, distinct types of memory, but they are all measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes, or even terabytes! Bytes are the smallest unit of memory. Kilobytes are roughly equivalent to one thousand bytes, about enough to hold one page of typed text. Megabytes are the next biggest amount and, you guessed it, are about equal to one thousand kilobytes. Gigabytes follow in the same fashion (they hold A LOT of information), and so do terabytes. *~Trivia Warning!~*The latin rootgiga means "giant", and tera means "monster"!

So what's good for each type of memory? Ideally, the hard drive should hold the largest amount, followed by RAM and then video memory. Although these amounts constantly change (hey, having 16 MB of RAM used to be impressive), a good hard drive should hold at least 20 GB, probably a lot more if you're into photos, music, and especially videos (some models hold well past 200 GB!). RAM should be at least 1024 MB or above, and video memory varies with what you want to do. If you bought a computer to gun down and frustrate thousands across the globe while making it look like a high quality movie, 512 MB is stellar (even more is probably unnecessary, but FANTASTIC!). However, if you're just using Word, you won't need much at all.

Let's say :

1 bit=1 binary (0s and 1s) digit

1 byte=8 bit

1 kilobyte=1024 bytes

1 megabyte=1024 kilobytes (Sounds like a lot; it isn't really.)

1 gigabyte=1024 megabytes (You could say it's big)

1 terrabyte=1024 gigabytes (Humungous)

In video or tapes, an "exabyte" or "exobyte" is up to about a year straight of recording.

Hope this answers your question thoroughly, and hey, you just might have learned something!