when 512GB is actually 476

To this day I see negative Amazon reviews from people who bought computer media storage and believe they got scammed - except they didn't.

One of the more common ones are people who buy a 512GB flash drive, plug it in to their computer or phone, see a total storage limit of 476, and immediately think they got ripped off. Wrong. The number is accurate.

The confusion exists because an operating system reports the total available space in binary, but most (all?) computer media products for sale state the available space in metric.

It's standard practice to list total storage using metric on packaging and binary within operating systems.

My Samsung 512 GB EVO SD memory card in Windows looks like this:

Look where it says "Capacity:". You see that 476 GB and think, "Hey, you got ripped off!" Nope. Look to the left of that. 512,057,409,536 bytes total. In GB, that's 512. In GiB, it's 476, or to be technical, 476.890625 GiB. That's actually supposed to round up to 477 GiB, but 476 is stated. Whatever.

In Linux, same thing, I see the 476 GiB.

The way to get the exact output in terminal for total GiB capacity for Linux is this:

lsblk --output SIZE -n -d /dev/sdX

Want it in bytes? Add a -b:

lsblk -b --output SIZE -n -d /dev/sdX

The "sdX" part is whatever path your drive is assigned to.

Published 2025 Mar 20