07 March 2011
The way in which data is stored on disks is systematic and logical. When you “save” data to the disk, it will do so in a logical manner.
The minimum value of a storage unit is always zero but its maximum value depends on the number of bits which makes it up.
Binary Rule
The brain of the computer is made up of many switches. As switches, they can either be “on” or “off,” or a binary set of values corresponding to 0 or 1. As such, the computer is said to know only one language and that is binary.
Everything in your computer machine boils down to zeroes and ones. Anything digital is made up of “bits.” A bit is one switch or binary digit. The binary number “0101” has 4 bits. But computing machines do not work in terms of individual bits but in terms of bigger storage units.
A storage unit is a single, fixed amount of one or more binary digits. It can thus be said that a bit is a single binary digit which can only store one of two values. Four bits equal a nibble. Two nibbles make up one byte, 2 bytes make up one word, 2 words make a double-word and 2 double-words make up a quad-word.
Your computer can store only a finite number of storage units or bytes. The digital data thus stored refers to the values represented by the storage units kept on a digital device.
Hexadecimal Rule
The minimum value of a storage unit is always zero but its maximum value depends on the number of bits which makes it up. Let’s take for an example the nibble. It is made up of four bits, so that its range is from “0000b” to “1111b.” By the process of converting binary to decimal, we can arrive at a range of “0” to “15.” And “15” in hexadecimal is only “0xF.” As such, a nibble represents a single hexadecimal digit just in the same way as a bit represents a single binary digit.
Two hex digits equal to a byte, 4 hex digits to a word, 8 hex digits to a double word and 16 hex digits to a quad-word. This is far more concise than the voluminous amount of bits associated with it. It can therefore be said that the hexadecimal numbering system is very useful when dealing with storage units. Plus there is the added convenience of easy conversion from binary to hexadecimal and vice versa.
When you consider that a byte consists of any of 256 values, you can have an idea on just how massive the data a gigabyte or terabyte of disk can store.
