The PlayStation 5 comes packing an 825GB SSD, where you'll be able to store all your PS4 and PS5 games. However, with lots of big titles being the size they are these days, that's going to fill up pretty quickly. Will you be able to expand PS5's on-board storage? The answer is a definitive "yes", and here's how.
During his recent presentation, Mark Cerny confirmed that PS5 will be compatible with regular external hard drives, like the ones that currently work with PS4. The advantage of this is that you'll be able to just use the external HDD you already have, or purchase a relatively inexpensive one. The downside to using one of these is that you won't gain the benefit of the SSD's impressive load speeds.
However, that's not your only option. You'll also be able to make use of NVMe drives, which are essentially external SSDs. This is similar to what Microsoft is doing for Xbox Series X. The problem is -- without going technobabble mad -- there are no NVMe drives on the market that match up to PS5's internal SSD. In other words, to get the best use out of this method of extra storage, you'll need to wait until NVMe drives for PCs catch up to PS5's capabilities. The downside to this is that it could be quite an expensive investment.
Still, it sounds like you'll have plenty of options when it comes to extra storage space. What do you make of all this? Will you stick to PS5's 825GB of storage, or will you seek out more room for your games? Give each other some space in the comments below.
Comments 16
Hmmm in the article you say the storage will fill up quickly bc of how big modern games are. But I thought bc of their really good SSD games might actually decrease in size?
No proprietary hardware it seems, that's good news, just have to buy the correct ones that fit.
On one side it's great to be able to choose from more brand on ps5 storage, on another side man nvme ssd is way expensive. Forget buying 2tb nvme ssd, samsung ssd 970 evo plus cost about $500 in my country. I think I can buy another ps5 with that money
I think either Sony or a third party is going to have to build a NVMe Drive specifically for the PS5 that doesn’t have the features that the PS5 doesn’t use. If there isn’t a PlayStation branded one it will be difficult to go out into the market and understand whether the drive you’re looking at would work with the PlayStation five.
What they also said, like with MS's console, you will need to keep your PS5 games on the SSD but can use external HDD's for the BC games. Some PS5 games may not 'need' to be on the SSD if they don't use the SSD similarly to how games these days use RAM. Instead of moving assets from HDD to RAM to stream in games, the SSD bypasses that procedure and the game streams them directly from the SSD instead. The SSD has a much greater bandwidth so can stream many more GB's of data/files much quicker than trying to find the right assets on the HDD, move them to RAM and then stream them into the game which is the current method and why PS4 (like XB1 and older BC games on Series X) can work from an external HDD.
Maybe this also explains why Sony has a higher bandwidth SSD because MS went with something that is currently available and not something that will eventually become available. I wouldn't be surprised if that does make extra storage more expensive per TB too but its 'optional' - you can 'manage' with 825GB if you don't mind reinstalling games and/or only have a few games on your System at any one time. A lot of people coped with 500GB in their original PS4...
It is an NVME, so that is good.
The FieCuda 520 does 5Gbs/4.4Gbs and it is $229 for 1 TB. It will get cheaper from there.
I am still using my original PS4 drive from 2013. 800+ internal is more than enough for me.
I’m still trying to deal with the fact that my PS4 Pro I bought about 3 or so years ago came with more internal storage then next gen consoles that aren’t even out yet..
So are they actually saying that even the newer games will run and load from standard mechanical external hard drives, the only thing you will sacrifice is speed?
If that's true then I'd be willing to sacrifice speed for raw storage as I've gotten so used to using my 8TB HDD and not have to micro manage everything.
Can anyone confirm if this is right?
That's not what he said,
We will need a SSD better than PS5 say 7.7 data transfer speed because it has 2 things and the ps5 has 6 so working with 6 will slow it down to the ps5 speed.
Theres a simple solution to this. The internal, hell-fast SSD should act as a buffer of sorts. Just like back in the day when SSHDs came out. Where you had a huge storage part (external SSD in this case, 2 TB for example) and a very fast buffer part (internal custom SSD). The system could then keep the often-played data on the faster drive and move things around as needed.You won't be playing more than 3 or 5 titles at once anyways, so this should work perfectly well. Even on "slow" SSDs shoveling HUGE junks of data back- and forth is only a matter of a few short minutes and could happen perfectly fine in the background.
My download speed is good enough to reinstall a game like HZD within 30min... I basically always delete games I don’t play.
So I may not even extend the internal storage at all for the foreseeable future.
I’m currently only using half of my 1TB.
Tbh I prefer the X solution. Straight, perfect set-up disks, easy to use and possible cheaper than the new-gen third party disks.
I am so happy I can plug in my 8Tb 7200 RPM external HDD!! I plan to get another 8Tb for the PS5 side, removing a game form the SSD and putting it back on the SSD will be much faster if it is stored on HDD.
@Quintumply Can I replace the PS5's internal SSD? I have no plans on using external storage or anything else.
@KidBoruto I don't know, Sony's been making a big deal about the PS5's custom SSD so I kinda doubt it.
@Quintumply That's unfortunate, guess I'll have to wait for the inevitable official 2TB release down the line.
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