[SOLVED] True capacity of 512 GB flash drive

[rosawoodsii]

I recently bought a PNY 512 GB flash drive and discovered when I plugged it in that it had only 461 GB. A little research revealed that the file system takes up a good portion of the space, but that it should be around 476 GB actual capacity, as there is an expected 7% capacity loss. So I looked around at another brand and found that it, also, had a capacity of 460 GB. 51-52 GB loss--10%-- seems like quite a bit to me, and I'm definitely irritated that manufacturers are basically lying about the capacity. I don't even want to think about the loss for a 1 TB or higher USB.

I have two questions:

1. Why would the file system take up so much space?
2. Are there any 512 GB USBs that have 476 GB or above?

 

[USAFRet]

1. Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window
2. The dichotomy between reported drive size has been a thing for decades.

A "500GB" drive is shown in Windows as 465GB
512GB as 476GB.

And on and on.
There is no "loss".
It is simply a difference in reporting units.
Base 10 vs Base 2.
Human vs computer.

 

[fzabkar]

You will find that the flash drive actually contains 512 GiB of NAND flash memory.

That's 512 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes, ie 512 GiB (gibibytes).

A small part of that is reserved for the drive's firmware.

The manufacturer sells you a product which purports to have a capacity of 512 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes, ie 512 GB (gigabytes).

The difference results in about 7% of overprovisioned space.

512GiB / 512GB = 1.07

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=512GiB+/+512GB

In your case a 512GB drive should have a usable capacity of 476.8 GiB:

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=512+GB+in+GiB

If Windows is seeing a capacity of 461GiB, then it would appear that the drive's capacity has been misrepresented. However, I would first examine the manufacturer's datasheet to see what is being claimed.

 

[rosawoodsii]

Yes, 7% was my understanding as well.
Can't show a picture of the DM window as I returned the flash drive yesterday, hence my question about whether there are any that truly have the 476 GB they should have.