Answer: There are two common answers:
- Decimal (SI): 1 megabyte (MB) = 1000 kilobytes (KB).
- Binary/IEC: 1 mebibyte (MiB) = 1024 kibibytes (KiB). (Historically many people also call this “1 MB = 1024 KB”.)
Explanation:
- In the decimal system used by SI prefixes, 1 KB = 1000 bytes and 1 MB = 1000 × 1000 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes, so \(1\ \text{MB} = 1000\ \text{KB}\).
- In the binary system common in computing, 1 KiB = 1024 bytes and 1 MiB = 1024 × 1024 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes, so \(1\ \text{MiB} = 1024\ \text{KiB}\). Many systems historically label MiB as MB, yielding \(1\ \text{MB} \approx 1024\ \text{KB}\).
Examples:
- 5 MB (decimal) = \(5\times1000 = 5000\) KB.
- 5 MB (binary interpretation) = \(5\times1024 = 5120\) KB.
- 3.5 MB (decimal) = \(3.5\times1000 = 3500\) KB; binary-style: \(3.5\times1024 = 3584\) KB.
If you tell me which standard you need (SI or binary), I can convert any value for you.