A storage device is provided as follows. A nonvolatile memory device includes blocks, each block having sub-blocks erased independently. A memory controller performs a garbage collection operation on the nonvolatile memory device by selecting a garbage collection victim sub-block among the sub-blocks and erasing the selected garbage collection victim sub-block to generate a free sub-block. The memory controller selects the garbage collection victim sub-block using valid page information of each sub-block and valid page information of memory cells adjacent to each sub-block.