SSD Storage Capacity Question

[WIEZZY]

Hey,

So this feels like a noobish question, but its one that I haven't really had a reason to have answered until now:

I just put two SSDs in my computer, both made by Crucial - a 512 GB MX100 (new) and a 480 GB M500 (old). I formatted both as normal and only have one big partition spanning each whole drive.

Here's the question: If one is 512 GB and one is 480 GB, why are the capacities both showing up in Windows as 476 GB? 476 sounds like a good number for the 480 GB drive (in fact its actually at 477), but that same number sounds very low (36 GB unusable) for the 512 GB drive.

Does anyone know what the deal is there? Why 4 GB unusable in one and 36 GB unusable in the other? That means I get an extra GB of space by buying the 480 GB SSD over the 512 GB SSD, so how can they justify charging more money for it?

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

It is probably just a marketing change. The 480GB disk would have had 512GB of chips in it. The part between 480 and 512 is reserved by the controller to replace failed cells. This is known as overprovisioning. I bet that Crucial decided to change the NAME of the disk to make it sound larger. The amount of memory and the overprovisioning didn't change.

 

[WIEZZY]

It is probably just a marketing change. The 480GB disk would have had 512GB of chips in it. The part between 480 and 512 is reserved by the controller to replace failed cells. This is known as overprovisioning. I bet that Crucial decided to change the NAME of the disk to make it sound larger. The amount of memory and the overprovisioning didn't change.

Hmm... Interesting. Seems like one of those things that could be considered misadvertisement, despite the fact that all companies do it. Thanks for the input.