A megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital information storage capacity that represents one million bytes. It is commonly used to measure the size of digital files, data storage devices, and computer memory.
In terms of bytes, one megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 bytes, or 2^20 bytes. However, in some contexts, especially when referring to storage devices marketed by manufacturers, a megabyte may be defined as exactly one million bytes (10^6 bytes), which can lead to slight discrepancies in reported storage capacities.
A megabyte is often abbreviated as “MB” and is used to describe the size of files, such as documents, photos, videos, and software applications, as well as the storage capacity of devices like hard drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, and memory cards. For example, a typical MP3 music file might be around 3 to 4 megabytes in size, while a standard DVD can hold about 4.7 gigabytes (4,700 megabytes) of data.