128GB SSDs and Formatted Capacity

[Diagrafeas]

Do all 128GB SSDs have a formatted capacity of -112GB or this only happens with Sandforce ones?
Are there any Sandforce 128GB with more capacity?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

No.

Most 128GB SSD drives are equipped with 128 GiB (binary, 137 billion bytes) of NAND, but are sold with 128GB (decimal, 128 billion bytes) active - the rest is spare area and inaccessible to the user.

Sandforce drives have never been marketed as 128GB drives - they're sold as 120GB drives. They start with the same 128GiB / 137 billion bytes of NAND, but have 120 billion active bytes. The difference just goes to having more spare area.

Since Windows calculates drive size in binary (GiB), but reports GB, (because that's the way it used to be for everybody, until marketing people screwed it all up) a 120GB drive is actually 112GiB, and a 128GB drive is 119GiB.

Unless you're on a Mac, which will actually calculate things in decimal now. (So my 240GB Sandforce reports as 240GB on my Macbook, but if I mount it on a PC, it reports as 224.)

If you bought a 120GB Sandforce drive being sold/listed as a 128GB drive, you need to get your money back.

 

[Diagrafeas]

OCZ Agility 3 and Vertex 3 have both 60GB and 64GB part numbers. WHY?
AGT3-25SAT3-120G
AGT3-25SAT3-128G
VTX3-25SAT3-120G
VTX3-25SAT3-128G

I've read at Intel's 330 120GB review that it has RAISE disabled.
Does this mean that it will have 119GB capacity and the same applies for the above 128Gs?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

OCZ Agility 3 and Vertex 3 have both 60GB and 64GB part numbers. WHY?
AGT3-25SAT3-120G
AGT3-25SAT3-128G
VTX3-25SAT3-120G
VTX3-25SAT3-128G

I've read at Intel's 330 120GB review that it has RAISE disabled.
Does this mean that it will have 119GB capacity and the same applies for the above 128Gs?

Not necessarily. The nand freed up by disabling RAISE is just used for extra spare area in the 330.

As for the different sandforce drives:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5710/the-adata-xpg-sx900-128gb-review-maximizing-sandforce-capacity

Sandforce likes the extra spare area, at least in benchmarks. If your OS supports TRIM, it's no big deal one way or the other.

 

[Diagrafeas]

Nice article. Thanks.

 

[tweakboy]

Out of 128GB you will have like 110GB usable.

By the time you install OS and couple apps ad 60GB to that your left with 50GB free, and they say always keeps like 20GB free on SSDs to maintain speed. gl

 

[Diagrafeas]

Actuall my OS and all my apps take less than 30gb.
I don't use useless stuff like pagefile, hibernate, system restore...