Hello, what's the actual size of the storage on the steam deck?

[Ice]

So I know that for example, micro SD cards don't always have the specific memory card mention when you buy it, like a 128 micro SD card will have 116 in actuality. Does this also occur with people who already own the Steam deck, my friend says his has 466 on his 512? Isn't Steam lowballing people if this is the case considering games take allot of memory?

[invision2212]

raw unallocated data is 512gb but once you format it you lose some of that space. so it isnt wrong but it is deceiving if you arent familiar with it

[PopinFRESH]

This is incorrect. You don't understand IEC Binary vs SI Decimal units. The discrepancy you are talking about is because most storage manufactures provision storage in SI decimal, e.g. base10 (KB = 1000 bytes) rather than IEC Binary, e.g. base2 (KiB = 1024 bytes).

Gigabyte is base10
Gibibyte is base2

512GB = 476.837GiB

The rest of that difference is because the Steam Deck isn't magic, the OS takes up space and it's using a filesystem which will have some overhead.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mb+to+mib

[Ice]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

This is incorrect. You don't understand IEC Binary vs SI Decimal units. The discrepancy you are talking about is because most storage manufactures provision storage in SI decimal, e.g. base10 (KB = 1000 bytes) rather than IEC Binary, e.g. base2 (KiB = 1024 bytes).

Gigabyte is base10
Gibibyte is base2

512GB = 476.837GiB

The rest of that difference is because the Steam Deck isn't magic, the OS takes up space and it's using a filesystem which will have some overhead.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mb+to+mib

Awh, but then companies should explain this more often.

[@R+5]

Originally posted by Ice ☭:

Awh, but then companies should explain this more often.

true, but if they believe not mentioning stuff like this helps sales, the only way for that to happen is that a law forces them to do it.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Ice ☭:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

This is incorrect. You don't understand IEC Binary vs SI Decimal units. The discrepancy you are talking about is because most storage manufactures provision storage in SI decimal, e.g. base10 (KB = 1000 bytes) rather than IEC Binary, e.g. base2 (KiB = 1024 bytes).

Gigabyte is base10
Gibibyte is base2

512GB = 476.837GiB

The rest of that difference is because the Steam Deck isn't magic, the OS takes up space and it's using a filesystem which will have some overhead.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mb+to+mib

Awh, but then companies should explain this more often.

They already do. That is why you now see everywhere on storage device packaging the whole "1GB equals 1,000,000,000 bytes". It's not on storage vendors to educate people on how a 3rd party chooses to represent capacity.

Originally posted by @R+5:

true, but if they believe not mentioning stuff like this helps sales, the only way for that to happen is that a law forces them to do it.

Has nothing to do with "trying to sell more". This is a product of different people using the same prefixes with different meanings going back to early computing. Storage (going back to the original "fixed disks" the size of refrigerators and floppy disks) were built around base10 prefixes because of the type of medium being imperfect they saved some of the platter space for spare blocks. Memory pages were designed around base2. Both ended up using K (kilo) to represent 1000 bytes and 1024 bytes respectively. The storage people were "more" correct because Kilo was an already established prefix from other sciences meaning 1000.

There is nothing to legislate. It is the same value being expressed in different units. That still didn't stop people suing Seagate and others because of their own ignorance which is why you see the disclaimer on storage packages and all over their manuals

Originally posted by Seagate:

One GB equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending on
operating environment and formatting

[Synne]

Originally posted by @R+5:

Originally posted by Ice ☭:

Awh, but then companies should explain this more often.

true, but if they believe not mentioning stuff like this helps sales, the only way for that to happen is that a law forces them to do it.

It have nothing to do with sales or deception. It's actual basic computer knowledge. Look up any type of documentation or read anything about it and you'll find it available everywhere that you will never get the full amount of storage space named on the box because of calculation conversion of bits to bytes to gigabytes. Especially if it's already installed and in use to store the OS. You buy an Xbox or a PS5 that says it have 1 tb but it doesn't have the full TB because of reasons mention above.

[Prezidentas]

It's confusing because Windows labels GiB as GB. Apple and Linux report proper units. Microsoft seems to be stuck in kindergarden.