Topic: Playstation 5 Hard Drive Size

With regards to the Playstation 5 SSD size being marketed as 825GB does this mean the actual hard drive it 1TB but has been partiton off for the operating system to the reduce size of 825GB which is left for us to use for game installs and saves?

No, I understand it's something to do with the 12 channel hardware arrangement. They'd have to double the capacity to go any higher and that would cost too much. I don't think we know how much the OS takes up yet, so not all of that 825GB will be available.

@SJBUK essentially you are right, essentially each NAND flash memory module comes with it's own channel, so the I/O can read simultaneously from each chip. So because NAND modules come in a set size... you end up with roughly 825 GB of storage. To get the read times games will be split across the 12 modules, it's a highly bespoke set-up and I'm intrigued to see how third party SSDs fit into the architecture.

@SirAngry I love what they've done with this, the audio and the DualSense. I was sold on the PS5 after Cerny's deep dive back in March. What real difference it will all make I guess we'll have to see but I've signed up for the ride. I don't know how the third-party SSD's will fit in, maybe textures etc. will still be stored on the internal SSD but other data on the third-party one?

@SJBUK from a technical standpoint I know how third party SSDs will "fit" into the PS5's I/O framework... that is to say poorly. I kinda hope we see Marvell branded or spec'ed SSDs soon with the same I/O set up. I just can't wrap my head around the brute force math right now, because an 8 channel 2 priority level SSD has to have way more than 7 GB/s read times to match the PS5's in-built masterpiece. I kinda think Microsoft did the right thing going proprietary, they can ensure compatibility sure, but from my perspective they give us a stable performance benchmark. Sure, from a developers perspective how the PS5 will treat third party SSDs is essentially blind, but it could have very real implications for how your software performs from one PS5 to the next. Give me standardized 12 channel multiple priority order PS5 SSDs and my stress levels would be much, much lower.

@SirAngry Maybe you can tag data to determine whether it needs to go on the proprietary SSD or not? Or maybe it's part of the prioritisation mechanism? I would imagine a good chunk of game data wouldn't require the optimum transfer speed, you'd not notice the difference whether it came from the proprietary or M.2 expansion SSD.

Assuming it will work, which I'm inclined to do for now, being able to plug in third-party drives has to beat proprietary from an end-user cost perspective. Exciting times.

@SJBUK nope, totally disagree. We use NBT tags so a game knows where to retrieve data from, and as a game is a live piece of software whose execution isn't linear you don't always know what data you'll need when. There's far more than load time implications to having PS5 games installed on an external SSD, in fact one project certainly wouldn't run if it were essentially transfering data via a USB connection, it literally wouldn't work. We have tolerances we have to build to and can't exceed, but also if we build to those then anything below that can cause serious problems. I'm sure M.2 SSDs (which are internal expansion and much quicker than external SSDs) will come along at some point and be able to brute force it, but there will be some that aren't quite good enough, that will definitely cause problems. This is why I think there should have been PS5 branded SSD upgrades like MS have done with the XSS|X.

@SirAngry Bad wording on my part, I've edited my post. I was talking about the internal M.2 SSD expansion, fully appreciate that external wouldn't cut it. From what Sony have said I believe only specific M.2 drives would work, so expect they'll have a whitelist to either stop non-approved drives from being recognised or warn the user about potential performance issues.

For me this is all a non-issue, all the games I'll want to play will fit on the internal SSD. I've no issue swapping things in and out if I need to. I know for some it may be a problem, so I guess those in that situation should adopt a wait and see approach.

MS released price for their 1TB expandible storage - £160 or £220. Roughly in the region of what a seagate 4.0 M2 sata is priced at, will be interesting to see what the Sony approved ones will be, guessing Seagate will be among them.

The new 980Pro 1TB is £220 on Scan
Capacity: 1TB.
NAND Flash Memory: Samsung 12-layer V-NAND 3bit MLC.
DRAM Cache Memory: 1GB LPDDR4.
Read Speed: 7000MB/s.
Write Speed: 5000MB/s.