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starblue

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,741
Is there any difference between external SSD and external HDD on PS5 (PS4 games) ?

SSD will be faster or it really doesnt matter that much in this case ? Better 4Tb HDD than 1Tb SSD ?

Thank you
 

alphacat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,931
I am wondering this as well. What's the best cold storage for PS5?
 

Arkham

Member
Nov 12, 2017
322
I'm looking at the Samsung T5/T7 2TB, but need to hear more experiences from PS owners before I decide. Oh, and sales. 😂
 
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Hawk269

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,043
I bought a 1tb External SSD the other day. I am hoping/praying that it is like the Series X and that it will greatly benefit. On the Series X, the External SSD loaded BC games almost as fast as the internal one, so if it is like that then that would be fantastic. I am also waiting for DF to cover this. I am shocked they did not cover it during their PS5 BC coverage. But hopefully they will soon.
 

nadbmal

Banned
Mar 9, 2018
297
External SSD will be better for speed, but I recently switched to a 4 TB external cheap HDD and I feel kind of liberated not thinking about storage at all. Just downloaded my entire library and there's still 1 TB left, so I'm probably just gonna plug that into the PS5 when it's time.
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,065
I bought a Toshiba Canvio Basics in anticipation for this. Been using it on PS4 and very happy with it. It's a good cheap option.
 

pezzie

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,430
I have an old Samsung 250gb SSD (that I stuck in an external enclosure) I used with my PS4 that I'm gonna stick on my PS5 for now. I'm hoping it improves performance over the same drive back on the PS4 Pro.

I don't want to buy another drive for storage for the time being until the internal NVME for PS5 prices come down. An extra 250gb isn't much but it'll be like 30% more space from base PS5 so I'll live with it. I'll stick the games that probably won't have much loading onto that like Persona 5 Royal.
 

halfjoey

Member
Nov 26, 2017
882
I have an external 500GB Sandisk SSD that will store PS4 games but i know that will fill up fast. I don't mind cold storing my PS5 games to an external drive in the future.
 

wild_one

Member
Oct 27, 2017
148
Went and got the Samsung T7 2TB from Amazon just for this purpose, 10Gbps USB speed should make it that much faster than the T5, plus it was on sale (and Amazon thought my account was hacked, so invalidated orders for the day even if they shipped)
 

RedOnePunch

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,628
I have a T5 im using on the PS4. Been very happy with it. I have a WD I'm using on the X1X and I've been happy with that as well. There are more expensive options out there now like the WD Black external SSDs but I'm not sure if it's worth spending that much
 

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,628
texas
Seems like you get PS4 Pro SSD loading speeds so any SATA SSD is fine.

You can step up to faster drives if you also want a little better file transfer speeds.
 

defaltoption

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
11,483
Austin
The best storage is the largest SSD (sata or pcie doesn't matter) you can afford. If you cannot afford an ssd of the size you want get the largest hard drive you can afford up to 8tb.
 

Qudi

Member
Jul 26, 2018
5,318
I will continue to use my 4TB WD Portable external USB Drive. I dont see the the point of paying almost 4 times for an equivalent ssd in size for ps4 games.
 

DjRalford

Member
Dec 14, 2017
1,529
I picked up a 1TB X8 external NVMe, its small, fast enough to saturate the 10gbps USB, and has enough storage for me to use for any PS4 games I'll want to play.
 

Kuro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,591
If Sony doesn't patch BC to take better advantage of SSD speed, you'd probably be fine with a low end SATA USB SSD. Maybe even get away with a WD Black. (If you care about transfer speed then a an 860 Evo is affordable enough and hits about half the USB speed rating of PS5.)
 

Deleted member 23046

Account closed at user request
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
6,876
update- a report about this drive and a problem I had to solve :

www.resetera.com

Best external storage for PS4 games on PS5 ?

I quote my message : be careful with the basic model I have tested (the simple SATA one, not the NVME). I couldn't make it work as external storage except on the front USB-C port of the PS5 and with the USB-A>C dongle you see on the picture plugged on both rear USB-A ports of the PS5. It didn't...


About the difference, SSDs are better for reliability, lifespan, access time and speed. And the console will take advantage of it, it's already visible on a normal PS4/Pro despite what some could have written here and there. But HDDs still have strong arguments regarding size/cost. So it's between your needs and your wallet.
 
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Nerun

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,270
Recently bought the Samsung T7 1 TB when it was on sale, guess I'll use that for BC games on PS5 (currently hooked up to my Gaming Laptop, as my internal nvme ssd is too small with 512 GB).
 

flyinj

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,941
So what is the deal with external PS4? I assume you can copy your PS4 content to and from the internal SSD, right?
 

TotalMackerel

Member
Oct 26, 2017
662
Do we know yet if we can use more than one external hard drive at a time on ps5? I know we couldn't on ps4.
 

darkazcura

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,884
So you can play PS4 games off of an external drive? Just not PS5 games. I would be fine with that for now if true.
 

asmith906

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,359
I've got a 4TB drive laying around I plan to hook up to my PS5. Honestly I wasn't bothered by most load times outside of Bloodborne and fighting games. Those I'll store on the internal hard drive but for everything else I value storage space. Taking a few extra seconds to load a game is worth it to not have to spend days redownloading hundreds of gigabytes of data if I ever want to replay something.
 

Mass One

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,116
I'm using a WD Black 5tb, I'd say it's pretty great. Quiet and no extra cable for power.
 

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,622
External SSD is already a lot faster than the internal HDD running it on the PS4, and it doesn't have the system bandwidth to really make full use of it. It should be a hell of a lot faster on the PS5.

We'll probably see some benchmarks on this before launch.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,953
Houston
About the difference, SSD are better for reliability, lifespan, access time and speed. And the console will take advantage of it, it's already visible on a normal PS4/Pro despite what some could have written here and there. But HDD still have strong arguments regarding size/cost. So it's between your needs and your wallet.

Me I am using this dust/humidity-proof 5Gbps SSD cutie because I don't need more for the moment :

7589-E091-767-D-4-DEF-BEFF-CAE9-CFCF280-C.jpg


But for people interested it also exists in two (bigger) NVME variants.
ordered the gen 2, 1 TB version just a hour ago, arrives tomorrow in prep of PS5 coming thursday
 

DanteMenethil

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,054
Is there such a thing as a usb 3.1 10gbps ssd with usb type a and not type c? I can find hard drives adapters with those specs but not actual external drives
 

Egida

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,378
I hope I can just plug in the external HDD I'm using with my PS4. Based on Gameinformer review, as long as I log in with my account it should work without any more adjustments.
 

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,628
texas
External SSD is already a lot faster than the internal HDD running it on the PS4, and it doesn't have the system bandwidth to really make full use of it. It should be a hell of a lot faster on the PS5.

We'll probably see some benchmarks on this before launch.
I don't think so. Days Gone loads at the same speed on PS4 with an SSD as PS5.

I do hope there's more like for like tests soon.
 

dedge

Member
Sep 15, 2019
2,429
So going from this topic, the Samsung T7 would be a good option? I think I'm going standard storage for both consoles to start but could see caving soon
 

Gitaroo

Member
Nov 3, 2017
7,987
Does ps5 allow multiple hdd connected? I almost maxed out my 3tb for ps4, unless there is a way to move games between external drive to external drive I might have to move everything back to ps4 internal drive then move them to a new 5tb drives.
 

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,628
texas
Does ps5 allow multiple hdd connected? I almost maxed out my 3tb for ps4, unless there is a way to move games between external drive to external drive I might have to move everything back to ps4 internal drive then move them to a new 5tb drives.
Nope. Already tested by reviewers.
You can't use them at the same time.
 

Kickfister

Member
May 9, 2019
1,782
For faster loading times, a basic high capacity sata ssd is the best option for PS4 games. Getting anything faster will not be worth it, even a little bit. If you just want all your games downloaded, then get a big external 7200 RPM hard drive. You'll still see some load speed improvements with this due to the higher RPM and the significantly faster CPU. DF had a great video on this for the Series X and the same thing will apply to the PS5.

Note that you cannot currently transfer PS5 games on and off the internal SSD (which is a massive oversight and Sony better fix that).

EDIT: Omg do not buy an external SSD like many are suggesting. It's an absurdly unnecessary markup for a couple of reasons:
  1. SSDs are already basically shock proof. They don't need any additional protection that a fancy enclosure provides, unlike a hard drive which really needs the protection.
  2. Adapters are dirt cheap.
If you're buying right now, I'd get this: https://www.newegg.com/team-group-gx2-1tb/p/N82E16820331316
And this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Adapter-Optimized-EC-SS31/dp/B017NIDXF0

I'll also add that, for back compat games, the read/write speeds are utterly irrelevant. The bottlenecks lie elsewhere (which is why microsoft and sony devised those fancy system architectures for accelerating the SSDs, which will go completely unutilized in back compat). It's the same story over on PC, a game loads almost exactly as fast on a basic SATA SSD and the worlds fastest NVMe drive. If you're buying an SSD for back compat, do not spend extra on something fancy, it's a literal waste of money in every sense.
 
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Deleted member 18847

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
772
I'm looking at the Samsung T5/T7 2GB, but need to hear more experiences from PS owners before I decide. Oh, and sales. 😂

I ended up getting a 2TB Samsung T5 SSD. It's half the price of the T7 version here in Australia ($319 vs $600+). It's also half the speed in sequential read/write benchmarks but the same speed for non sequential read/write which I'm assuming would mostly be the case for gaming?

Will use it for a few PS4 games and hopefully as cold storage for PS5 games if Sony enable it.
 

pg2g

Member
Dec 18, 2018
4,794
With the amount that some of these external SSDs cost, I am totally waiting to see what the prices look like for the approved expansion drives. At $200+ id rather spend the money on something that will allow me to play PS5 games as well.
 

pixeldreams

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,036
I went for size over speed and got a 5TB HDD for ~$100. I'm willing to be more diligent about what is on the system drive as I managed with a launch PS4 for many years. Plus any game that doesn't have significant load times to begin with can live on the external.
 

Deleted member 18847

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
772
With the amount that some of these external SSDs cost, I am totally waiting to see what the prices look like for the approved expansion drives. At $200+ id rather spend the money on something that will allow me to play PS5 games as well.

Unless money is no object, that is the sensible way to go. I was set on getting a large spinning drive, half the price of the SSD I ended up getting but twice the storage. I plan on keeping my PS4 around and figured that for storing the few BC games that get patched, the 2TB SSD should serve me well until internal expansion options shake out.