How to choose a hard drive for PS4 hard drive upgrade. The standard PS4 HD is 500gb, but the games will be almost 50gb each, which doesn’t leave much room to store your games or download them digitally.
The good news is that Sony made it very easy for the average Joe to upgrade his PS4. All you need is a standard Phillips screwdriver and you’re ready to go.
PS4 Hard Drive Upgrade – These are the current PS4 HD specs you should be aware of.
- 2.5 inches (Standard laptop internal HD will be 2.5 inches, but desktops can use this size too)
- 9.5mm size (9.5mm laptop size internal HD)
- 500gb size (Ability to store data)
- 5400RPM (How fast does HD work)
- SATAIII (How fast data can be transferred)
with everything you said SHOULD be sure to search 2.5 inches Y 9.5mm when looking for a new hard drive, something bigger and return it.
There are a couple of PS4 hard drive upgrade recommendations that will help you find an HD within your budget.
- Size – 1TB (1000GB+) – There really is no use getting anything between 500gb and 1TB. A 500gb model will give you the same storage and 750gb will only give you another 5 sets of storage.
- rpm – 5400 is standard for hard drives, but you really want to get a 7200 RPM HD. 10000RPM and 15000RPM drives are not yet available above 1TB and I personally wouldn’t spend $350 on a 10000RPM drive that is only 600MB. Also note that on laptops, the higher the RPM, the more power it will consume, since your console is plugged in, you won’t have to worry about battery life.
- sata – Sata II can transfer data at a maximum of 3.0 gb/s, while Sata III can transfer up to 6.0 gb/s. You really want a Sata III drive if you’re upgrading. Sata III is backwards compatible with Sata II. (Note) PS4 is confirmed to use Sata II, so as long as your drive is Sata III, it will use Sata II speeds.
What about SSD (solid slate drive)? SSD is still quite new and very expensive to buy. The total size capacity of SSDs that are available is fractional compared to non-SSDs.
Can I buy an external hard drive? Unfortunately no, external hard drives won’t work for the PS4 the way you want. Playing games directly from an external hard drive will not be allowed.
Having said all that after searching Newegg and Amazon, there are limited options available at the moment. The 1TB 5400RPM drive and the 500GB 7200RPM drive are roughly the same price as the 1TB 7200RPM drives.