datastørrelsen

Datastørrelsen refers to the amount of digital data that is stored, transmitted, or processed. In Norwegian and Danish usage, the term denotes the size of a data set, file, or data stream, and is typically expressed in bytes and their multiples.

The basic unit is the byte, which can hold about one character of text in most encodings. Larger units include kilobyte (kB or KB), megabyte (MB), gigabyte (GB), terabyte (TB), petabyte (PB) and exabyte (EB). There is a widely observed distinction between decimal prefixes (where 1 kB = 1,000 bytes) and binary prefixes (where 1 KiB = 1,024 bytes; 1 MiB = 1,024^2, etc.). In memory contexts, binary prefixes are common; in storage marketing, decimal prefixes are more typical. Some standards use KiB, MiB, GiB, while others use KB, MB, GB interchangeably.

Datastørrelsen can refer to the size of a single file, a dataset, or the amount of data transferred in a period. It is different from data rate or bandwidth, which measure speed, and from storage capacity, which indicates maximum possible data that can be stored.

Overhead and compression affect datastørrelse. File formats, metadata, and compression reduce or add to the indicated size. Examples: a plain text file may be a few kilobytes, a digital photo often several megabytes, and a high-definition video can reach many gigabytes.