Convert Zip 100 (Zip 100) to Kilobyte (10^3 bytes) (kB (10^3)) instantly.
About these units
Zip 100 (Zip 100)
The Zip 100 drive stored 100 MB, offering a dramatic leap over floppy disk capacity. Released by Iomega in the mid-1990s, it became extremely popular for backups, graphics projects, and transporting large files. Graphic designers, office workers, and early multimedia users relied heavily on Zip drives during a period when hard drives were small and CDs were not yet convenient for rewritable storage. Zip disks represented an era of transitional storage—but also gained notoriety for the infamous "click of death," a mechanical failure that could render disks unreadable. Despite this, Zip drives were a defining feature of 1990s computing.
Kilobyte (10^3 bytes) (kB (10^3))
A decimal kilobyte equals 1,000 bytes, reflecting the SI prefix kilo = 10³. Storage device manufacturers standardize on this definition because it scales cleanly and simplifies marketing and specification. This creates a mismatch with binary kilobytes (1,024 bytes) historically used in RAM and file systems. As storage capacities grew, this discrepancy became increasingly noticeable, leading standards bodies to promote explicit binary prefixes (KiB, MiB) for clarity. Despite these efforts, decimal kilobytes remain dominant in contexts such as hard drives, flash memory packaging, and communication standards.