Topic: PS4 hard drive help

My fiance has a PS4 and I was trying to surprise him with an external HDD for our anniversary. I know very little about these systems and I ended up ordering this case from walmart:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/3-5-2TB-HDD-Enclosure-High-Speed-T...

Can someone please tell me what kind of drive i need to order to put in it? I know he wants at least 2TB. When I try to search the results are just so confusing...
Thanks for your help!

You should get a "2TB 3.5 hard disk drive". I cannot really comment a brand since I don't use them.
However this case is not really needed. You could simply order a "2TB 2.5 hard disk drive". This is smaller and fits inside any PS4 model.

@belmont Does it need to say internal or external to go in the case I ordered? He doesn't want to change the one inside the PS4. He just wants extra storage space. Also, how do I know if it's ps4 compatible?

@Michaelsgirl0604 It has to be internal for this case since you change the internal if you use it. If you want an external one simply buy a USB 3 2.5 inches external hard drive. You can go up to 4TB. Anything from a known brand like Western Digital or SanDisk or Maxtor should do the job. It simply connects to a free USB port or PS4.

Hi all, wasn't sure whether to create a new thread and all the properly relevant threads are archived. Though I do need hard drive help, it is different from the original posters so hopefully it is relevant to post here...

I'm planning to upgrade my internal PS4 hard drive to 2tb. I currently use an external and will use both when the operation is complete. I've deleted some games and I'm moving the remainder over to the external currently so I don't have to redownload/reinstall them due to the currently capped PSN download speeds.

I plan to back up what's left on the internal (save games, screenshots etc) on a separate external drive and restore from that one. I thought it would be better to restore as little data as possible because I had issues with the restore on my PS3 when the hard drive was full. I'll probably run the rebuild database and restore default settings before I back it up (according to the ps support site, this won't delete my save games).

1. Will the external drive I moved my games to (not the back up) still work on the PS4 once I've swapped the hard drives or will it need a reformat as if it's being used on a fresh system?

2. I'm also looking to get rid of/reduce the size of the "other" folder on both my internal and external storage. As I understand it, the rebuild database will only help with the internal storage, anyway to do something similar for the external?

@ralphdibny In regards your first point, you can move the external drives between different different consoles. Although technically it is the same ps4, it will be treated as a new console as it has a new internal drive. Just make sure you are signed into the same profile before connecting your external HDD. It will take a few mins for everything to load up from the external drive. I take my external drive to my parents and just plug it into my dad's ps4 (I have my profile saved under a different user which I log into with a pin every time I switch to my profile). Saves me having to download any games that I fancy playing at the time.

@JohnnyShoulder oh right, nice one cheers for the advice! Can you copy the installs to the internal of the new PS4 then? I'm probably going to copy the games I actually own to the internal and use the external for ps plus

I'm currently just going through and deleting/trimming video clips. I don't know why I thought the mad Max game was so interesting that I saved 15 minute video clips from it 😂. I probably just hit the share button by accident. I might delete the trophy screenshot captures too seeing as most of them are just loading screens. I wonder if any of these automatic screenshots are actually good pictures.

I have about 18 gig in other on internal and 10 gig in other on external.

@ralphdibny Sorry not quite sure what you mean by 'installs'? The new internal drive will work the same as the old one, you will just need to install the ps4 system onto it, which can get form the Sony website. My advice is to either read or watch something before you do anything as that will guide you step by step what you should be doing. There will something on the offical support pages.

@JohnnyShoulder oh I meant the games you take on your external hard drive to another PS4 (or in my case, the same PS4 with a new internal hard drive)

I think I'm all good for swapping the internal drive, I just don't think there's any guidance on what happens with external drives that are in use when you swap it.

@ralphdibny Ah gotcha. Your new internal drive will be like a blank slate with just the system software on it. It will be like when you had a new ps4. When you sign in you can then download stuff and transfer any games from your external drive.

Looks like I have found, at least partially, what is stored in the elusive "other folder" on systemstorage>application data...

I just went to back up my internal drive (which apart from other, has no application data on it) and it gave me the opportunity to choose what to back up from within the currently 18gb other folder and basically it is "System Storage-Exclusive Data" from most, if not all of the games that I have installed on my external drive

@ralphdibny Yeah i have a few of those too. Think Exclusive data is what is used by the ps4 system to find your installs quickly on the external HDD's, like a cache of some sort.

@JohnnyShoulder it's really weird that I couldn't find any mention of it anywhere else online. Seems like like the other data is mainly thought to contain the OS and notification data. It must contain some of that stuff because it was still about 2.5gb after I removed the external drive "system storage exclusive data".

I've swapped the drives now. Unfortunately the new one was packaged poorly which is unexpected considering I ordered directly from the Western digital store. The drive had fallen out of its end caps that it's transported in. I'm still using it but I am giving it a good stress test by moving/downloading all my games in one go. So if its going to fail then hopefully it does it in the next few days so I'm covered by 14 day statutory returns law rather than whatever wishy washy warranty I might have to use if it fails at a later date.

@ralphdibny I initially thought it is when you have a game on the ex hdd but have the default install location as the internal hdd, and then an update or DLC downloads and that was some kind temporary data before it gets shifted to the ex hdd.

@JohnnyShoulder not sure about the former because my default install location has been the external HDD since I bought it a few years back.

I think the update and dlc download data is stored there for sure though, either in "other" on the internal or external depending on your default install location or where the game is installed that the update applies to. I had a few bits of dlc downloaded for uninstalled games and it shaved a few gb off the "other" folder when I cleared it out. The data gets removed when you get rid of your notifications, specifically the download notifications that say waiting to install. To get rid of them you have to click cancel and delete.

@ralphdibny That was just a theory I had before I found out that it is just cached data. You can delete them but the system will just have to remake them.

You can back up your existing PS4 to an external USB drive.
install a new drive - I replaced my 500Gb drive with a 2TB SSD drive -
then once the PS4 has sorted the new drive out, you can
plug the usb drive with the backup into the usb slot and restore your drive data.
It was easy for me because over the years, whenever I replaced drives on laptops and computers I just stuck the old drives into USB caddies.
You can do the same with your old ps4 drive, stick it in a caddy.