The PS5 SSD has only 667.2GB of usable space, and you’ll want to reserve that for PS5 games (expansions to the internal storage aren’t available yet, coming in a future update). There are some limitations to bear in mind when looking to expand storage space on PS5, however.
Only PS4 games work on the HDD format.
Just as a word of warning, there are retailers offering external hard drives in the PS5 section like this one on EB Games, and technically, it will work but only for PS4 games, which is the important part.
I’ve seen this being thrown a lot over the last few days, both in our PS5 Facebook Group and on other areas of the internet. If I got it correctly it’s quite convenient, and you can use the external drive for PS4 without sacrificing SSD space. If you’re desperate to buy a USB 3.0 external HD for your PS5/Xbox Series X, these ones or these ones are a lot cheaper than what’s available on EB Games, but otherwise, don’t buy any hard drives for either the PS5/Xbox Series X at the moment. Standard external HDDs are not fast enough to be compatible with PS5 games. Only PS4 games can be stored on a standard external hard drive. This will need to be expanded if players plan on playing a bunch of different games on the console given today’s game file sizes. As with the PS4, you can plug in an external hard drive to download games.
PS4 external hard drive PS5 connectivity is plug and play, putting your entire library instantly at your fingertips, ready to play on the new console with no downloads or transfers needed. Here’s the lowdown on what you can and cannot save on an external hard drive on the PlayStation 5 and whether or not an SSD is needed over an HDD.
PS Plus users can just use the PS Plus Cloud Storage option to upload and download saves—a process that should have been automated for most users—or you can back them up to a USB drive and bring them to the PS5. As a bonus, if you have an external hard drive connected, the PS5 will default to downloading all PS4 games onto the external drive to save space on the internal SSD.
You cannot save PS5 games to an external hard drive.
Just for reference, the Xbox Series X has 1TB of storage and the PS5 only has 825GB of storage, so even if game sizes are smaller next-gen, it’s going to be a bit of a struggle.
Unfortunately, PS5 games cannot be installed on a standard external hard drive.
Using an external hard drive. The PS5 has a NVMe SSD slot, meaning the PS5 will let you use similarly spec SSDs, but because the type of SSD that the PS5 uses has barely reached the market, you can’t currently buy them. It’s unclear if the same thing will apply for PS5, but regardless you won’t be able to play PS5/Xbox Series X games off these externals. Support for correct SSDs will be added in the future. Still, I feel like you’ll need an external hard drive to store the games anyway, and the ease of plug-and-play makes this option the best choice. Just unplug your PS4 external hard drive, plug it into the PS5, and all of your games will be available and ready to play without the need to format anything or wait for long transfers or downloads.
One saving grace is that you can automatically set the PS5 to install PS4 games on an external hard drive, so that’s pretty handy. When trying to move games to the external hard drive that I had plugged in, only PS4 games showed up, which was consistent with that initial message.
It’s also been confirmed for Xbox Series X/S at least, that you’ll be able to move X/S games from an external hard drive onto your console to play them. Of course, if the external hard drive isn’t an option, you can still redownload all of your PS4 games from your library, or perform a PS4 to PS5 transfer of data, either through a direct cable connection or remotely between the systems. As explained in our detailed PlayStation 5 review, too, PS4 games will only receive decreased load times when installed on the internal SSD of the PS5. Affiliate Disclosure: Evolve Media LLC, and its owned and operated websites may receive a small commission from the proceeds of any product(s) sold through affiliate and direct partner links.
The M.2 bay can be found underneath the removable bottom plate on the PS5. So how to use an external hard drive with PS5 is as simple as plugging the external HDD into the console. The PS5 and its games make use of the ultra-fast SSD with its 5,500 MB/s write-speed. PlayStationLifeStyle.net is a property of Mandatory,