Apparatus and method for performing garbage collection by predicting required time

A method for operating a memory system including a controller and a nonvolatile memory device including a plurality of dies, each die including a plurality of planes, each plane including a plurality of blocks, each block including a plurality of pages, and including a plurality of page buffers, each page buffer for caching data in a unit of a page to be inputted to, and outputted from, each of the blocks, the method comprising:

• managing a plurality of super blocks according to a set condition, each super block including N blocks capable of being read in parallel among the blocks;
• generating predicted required times for the super blocks, respectively, each of the predicted required times representing a time needed to extract valid data from the corresponding super block;
• and
• selecting a victim block for garbage collection from among the blocks based on the predicted required times,
• wherein N is a natural number of 2 or greater, and
• wherein the generating of the predicted required times comprises:
• generating and managing the predicted required times during a period in which a number of free blocks among the blocks is less than or equal to a first number;
• and
• not managing the predicted required times during a period in which the number of free blocks among the blocks is greater than or equal to a second number, which is greater than the first number.