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Convert terabytes to gigabytes

1 TB = 1000 GB

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Questions

How many gigabytes are in a terabyte?

One terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. To convert any amount, multiply by 1000. Going the other way, one gigabyte is 0.001 terabytes.

What is the formula to convert TB to GB?

Multiply the terabyte figure by 1000. So GB = TB × 1000. For a quick mental estimate, multiplying by about 1000 gets you within a percent or so, which is close enough for most everyday purposes.

What does a terabyte actually look like?

One terabyte is a large photo and video library. A terabyte is a trillion bytes. Consumer drives are sold in decimal terabytes, which is why a '2 TB' drive shows as roughly 1.82 TiB once formatted.

And what is a gigabyte?

One gigabyte is about two hours of HD video. A gigabyte is one billion bytes. A drive sold as 1 TB holds 1,000 GB decimal, which your operating system may display as 931 GiB — nothing is missing, the units differ.

Why does my 1 TB drive show as only 931 GB?

Because two different definitions are in play. Storage manufacturers use decimal units — 1 TB means exactly one trillion bytes. Windows and many other systems display binary units but label them with decimal names, so they show that same drive as 931 "GB" when they mean 931 gibibytes. Nothing is missing and nothing is faulty; the drive holds exactly what it says, measured differently. The IEC standardised kibi, mebi and gibi in 1998 specifically to end this, but adoption has been patchy.

Is this conversion exact?

Yes — both decimal and binary prefixes are exactly defined powers, so every figure here is exact rather than approximate. The results are shown to seven significant figures; the underlying arithmetic uses full double precision.

About tb to gb

How to convert terabytes to gigabytes

Multiply by 1000. One terabyte is 1000 gigabytes, and one gigabyte is 0.001 terabytes.

GB = TB × 1000

Worked example

500 TB = 500000 GB. For a sense of scale, one terabyte is a large photo and video library, and one gigabyte is about two hours of HD video.

About the terabyte

A terabyte is a trillion bytes. Consumer drives are sold in decimal terabytes, which is why a '2 TB' drive shows as roughly 1.82 TiB once formatted.

About the gigabyte

A gigabyte is one billion bytes. A drive sold as 1 TB holds 1,000 GB decimal, which your operating system may display as 931 GiB — nothing is missing, the units differ.

Quick reference

terabytesgigabytes
1 TB1000 GB
2 TB2000 GB
5 TB5000 GB
10 TB10000 GB
25 TB25000 GB
50 TB50000 GB
100 TB100000 GB
1000 TB1000000 GB

Getting it right

The decimal and binary prefixes are the trap: a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes but a kibibyte is 1,024, and the gap compounds at every step until a terabyte and a tebibyte differ by about 10%. Storage manufacturers use decimal, operating systems often display binary, and neither is wrong — they are simply different units.

Other data size conversions

Convert gigabytes back to terabytes, or pick any other pair with the full unit converter. Related: TB to KB, TB to MB, TB to MiB.