Sony PlayStation 4 1TB Console - Black

Product Information

The best external hard drives for PS4 1.Toshiba Canvio Flex: Best all-round external hard drive for PS4 This is such a good SATA-type SSD, that I'm even considering it for my PS3 to breathe new life and durability into that console!

With SSD prices continuing to tumble due to, well, time, and a vibrant PC market, quality drives like the Samsung EVO 860 are more affordable than ever. When it comes to SSDs, the EVO series has long been the gold standard, and the 860 EVO offers serious performance, teamed with modern design and parts. A key benefit to upgrading your hard drive is adding extra storage space to your PS4. There's only 500GB of space on the standard PS4 and PS4 Slim and a larger 1TB on PS4 Pro. On base hardware, it'll only take a few big games to completely fill up your hard drive.Games like Call of Duty: Warzone and Marvel’s Avengers need over 100GB of hard drive space, making upgrading your PS4 hard drive very tempting. For enthusiast gamers, you'll no longer have to delete games to make space for the new additions to your library. Just think about it: the biggest games can top 100GB these days, and the PS4’s original 500GB and 1TB drives just can’t store that many games.Upgrading your PS4 hard disk does take a little bit of research, and it can be daunting to open your console – even if the process is pleasingly simple. However, whichever decision you make, you'll be happy with the expanded space. Crucial is another well-known and trusted storage maker, and their most recent additions - the X6 and X8 primarily - Emake for solid PS4 SSD options - as well as cross-gen ones for when you're ready to move to PS5. (Please note: this is a USB-C drive but comes with an adapter.) Set the PS4 on a steady surface, put a hand on the shiny top plate and move it to the side a little. This is actually a simple plastic drive cover that's not held in place with screws but a basic clip. How to choose the best external hard drive for your PS4 What should you look for in a PS4 hard drive?

Crucial’s drives don’t quite have the performance levels of Samsung’s drives, but in the PS4 that is less important thanks to their older storage connectivity systems. Drives like the Crucial BX500 still deliver a good performance boost over the PS4’s internal drives, and they’re just as reliable as Samsung’s products. And, if you’re able to use an SSD, then you can get a great speed boost as well as lashings of extra capacity. Whether you go for a hard disk or an SSD, it’s a no-brainer. When it comes to running games on PS4, it’s actually the fastest HDD we’ve tested. In A-B tests with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive, it shaved 12 seconds off the time it took to load The Last of Us Part II, and 13 seconds off loading a saved game. Differences in other titles aren’t so noticeable – we’re talking just a second or two with Resident Evil 2 – but this is a great HDD if you want your PS4 library close to hand, or want to make the most of PS+ Extra. Going beyond the extra space a hard drive provides, if you slot a super-fast SSD into your console, you'll also see a significant speed improvement. Although you'll want to read up on the pros and cons of using an SSD before you do that. You can only have one extended storage drive connected to your PS4, so you really want the biggest drive you can afford. Games these days can eat up vast amounts of storage space, so unless you’re exclusively planning on playing Fortnite or Minecraft, you’re going to need a large external drive.Interface type: Any USB 3 drive of almost any size will work; 250GB is the minimum capacity and a whopping 8TB the maximum. Neither the PS4 nor PS4 Pro support USB 3.1 gen 2 or USB Type C, so don’t worry about spending extra on a drive that sports these newer interface standards. If you want to upgrade your PS4 hard drive and are looking for the best hard drive option right now, then you should seek out an SSHD. These drives combine platter-based storage with smaller, faster portions of flash memory, and they learn which files you use frequently and move them to the faster flash storage – so they can be loaded faster.

Once you're happy you're not about to wipe out your gaming history, make sure there's no disc in the drive and turn the PS4 off completely (not standby). If your PS4 heads to standby as standard, hold down on the PS button until the power menu pops up, then select turn off PS4. Next, unplug all the PS4's cables (that's the HDMI lead and power cable most likely). The other reason to pay extra is that its performance is very good. The Toshiba Canvio Flex is a little faster, particularly when it comes to sequential read/write speeds, but the FireCuda isn’t far behind – and it outpaces most other rivals when it comes to loading games and saved games, albeit only by a couple of seconds in some titles. Its transfer times are also competitive when you’re copying games to and from the internal HDD. If you like the styling, this drive won’t let you down when it comes to performance. Read and write speeds were great in testing. The 2000MB/s speed you see on the box is as good as you'll get in an external hard drive, but in reality, it translates to some great load times and transfer speeds on PS5 and PC. I had a load of game capture footage stored on my PS5 I had been meaning to move across to my computer for video editing, and even though it was about 30 clips spanning a total of 22GB, the P40 swallowed it up from the PS5 in about a minute. The same was true of games once I formatted the drive for some extra storage. I transferred three games that added up to 18GB, and it moved across in just shy of a minute.Samsung is the king of consumer SSDs, so it’s no surprise that the firm’s solid-state products are the best options for slotting inside your PS4. The 870 QVO offers great performance levels that are several times faster than the PS4’s hard disks, and you’ll see noticeable upgrades to loading times and performance in the PS4 and PS4 Slim, plus speed improvements in the PS4 Pro, which has a better storage interface. When it comes to wanting to upgrade your PS4 hard drive, the first thing to do is to buy your replacement hard drive or SSD. The PS4 uses a 2.5-inch SATA format for hard disks and SSDs, and it’s quite an archaic design now – it’s generally only used for more affordable drives.

We're sort of cheating (but not really) with this option. The Seagate Firecuda offers SSD-like performance but is technically a hybrid drive. This keeps the price down in the first instance, but also gets you a solid performer that brings good elements of both drive type to the party. It's a 2.5" drive, so it'll fit neatly into your console (doubling the storage of your PS4 Pro, and potentially quadrupling the size of a regular 500GB model), and Seagate is a big, well-established name in PC storage, so this model is always going to be reliable and efficient. On the regular PS4 you'll notice the hard drive is not yet in full view. There's one screw we need to unscrew to release the frame that holds the hard drive, using a Phillips screwdriver. The best PS4 SSD is either an external one, or a SATA SSD that can replace your internal HDD. Either will bring you massive quality of life updates to a console that's approaching 10 years on the market. In terms of internal options, we'd recommend the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD, or, if you're watching your pennies, the Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD ST1000LM014. Do PS4 games run better on SSD?If you’re on a tighter budget then you can ditch the hybrid portion of the hard disk and opt for a conventional drive. This won’t deliver much of a performance boost over the PS4’s normal hard disks, but Seagate’s drives are certainly no slower. Another hybrid drive, the Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD main selling point is the improvements granted by its dual SSD and HDD heritage - shorter load times, faster installs, etc- but without the price hike. The caveat, of course, is that since this SSHD does also rely on a physical disk spinning at 5400RPM, the improvements may not be as dramatic as with a traditional SSD. Any drive you install into your PS4 needs to be under 9.5mm tall thanks to the size of the caddy that lives inside the PS4, which protects the drive and keeps it in place. This is no problem for SSDs, but it does prove to be a little limiting as many 4TB hard drives are a shade too chunky. There are four more screws that hold the hard drive to its metal frame. These sit on its sides, and can be released using the same Phillips screwdriver you used to free the HDD frame.