Convert Megabyte (MB) to Megabyte (10^6 bytes) (MB (10^6)) instantly.
About these units
Megabyte (MB)
A megabyte is traditionally 1,048,576 bytes (2²⁰), though storage manufacturers sometimes use the decimal version of 1,000,000 bytes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, megabytes represented substantial storage: early PCs had 256 kB or 512 kB of RAM, and hard drives with 10–40 MB were considered spacious. Software developers worked within tight memory budgets, optimizing every byte. Megabytes remain relevant today for file sizes such as images, audio files, small binaries, and executable programs. They mark a transitional era when computing moved from kilobytes to the far larger storage capacities we now expect.
Megabyte (10^6 bytes) (MB (10^6))
A decimal megabyte equals 1,000,000 bytes, used widely for describing hard disk storage, file sizes, and digital media capacity. Manufacturers favor decimal prefixes because they produce cleaner, larger-sounding numbers compared to binary equivalents. For example, a "500 MB" device would be smaller in binary units. Consumers and engineers must interpret megabytes within context, distinguishing whether a manufacturer intends binary or decimal. Although decimal megabytes dominate mass-storage descriptions, binary megabytes remain common in system memory and software.