[Technology] PS4 External Storage

[lost in london]

Hi all

I need to buy some external storage for my son's PS4.

Will HDD do the job, or do I need to spend quite a bit more and go for SSD?

For context, my son is 10, I owe him some money after the Stadia shutdown, and am leaning towards HDD as I doubt he will notice the difference (and I'm cheap), but would appreciate a bit of advice if anyone knows what the hell I'm going on about.

Thank you in advance for the 'turn it off and turn it on again' replies

 

[jcdenton08]

Either will work just fine.

Can I ask the reason for the need for external storage - is the internal HDD full?

SSDs are faster, better load times, may improve in game performance. They are less likely to fail/corrupt (I’ve been through three HDDs in my day one PS4 original).

They are also a lot more expensive for anything half decent and only worth getting if used as your primary hard drive (where the console OS is installed) as this is what affects loading times in booting, menus, and anything using the dashboard.

For your purposes it sounds like a good quality external HDD would be absolutely fine.

 

[lost in london]

Thanks for that. Yes, internal HDD is full. Sounds like external HDD will do the job.

 

[brightn'ove]

I have a 2TB Seagate external HDD for my PS4 and it has worked flawlessly for years.

 

[madinthehead]

Hi all

I need to buy some external storage for my son's PS4.

Will HDD do the job, or do I need to spend quite a bit more and go for SSD?

For context, my son is 10, I owe him some money after the Stadia shutdown, and am leaning towards HDD as I doubt he will notice the difference (and I'm cheap), but would appreciate a bit of advice if anyone knows what the hell I'm going on about.

Thank you in advance for the 'turn it off and turn it on again' replies

I got this and it has been good..

Amazon product

 

[schmunk]

I have 2TB recertified Western Digital MyPassport drives attached to both XBoxes in our house (and will work equally well with PS4/5). They draw power through USB, no power plug needed.

They're normally available very cheap but seem to be out of stock just at the moment. I paid ~£35-40 for each, delivered.

Recertified: Shop Recertified Digital Storage Drives | Western Digital

With recertified storage drives, get top-quality devices for less.

www.westerndigital.com

(N.B. don't worry about the "for Mac", "for gaming", etc. They'll all work the same, at the same speed, once formatted by your PS4. SSD drives are faster, but much more expensive).

 

[Gabbafella]

I have a 7tb external which I used to use on my PS4 and now on my PS5, works well on the former, maybe a little sluggish on the latter but it's just for storage, I don't play anything directly from it. It was under £100 from what I remember, I'll try and find it and add a link when I get chance, got it from Amazon.

 

[JetsetJimbo]

You don't get the full speed benefits of an SSD going through the PS4's USB ports anyway - you do get a small improvement, but probably not enough to justify the extra cost. So if he's only going to use it on the PS4, a hard disk should be fine, you'll get a lot more capacity for your money.

If he's planning to get a PS5 at any point, though, then he could re-use whatever disk you buy with that (but only for PS4 games). On the PS5, you do get a big speed boost with an SSD via USB, so he'll probably want an SSD rather than a hard disk at that stage. Up to you whether it's worth paying the extra now, or being pestered for an SSD down the line (but there's a good chance SSDs will be cheaper by then anyway).

It's also very easy to upgrade the internal drives on PS4s btw. They're designed to be user-replaceable.

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

I have a cupboard you could have to store it in.

 

[lost in london]

Thanks all

 

[saltdeanseagull1]

You can replace the internal hard drive with a bigger capacity, which is much neater than external drives. The PlayStation is designed to allow you as the user to do this without needing to be an IT guru, is very easy to do. You also need to obtain the start up software that you download from Sony on to a pen drive. If you google it you will see lots of how to's. I did mine some time ago and never had any issues.