#External storage for ps5 update#
#External storage for ps5 pro#
#External storage for ps5 Ps4#
#External storage for ps5 series#

#External storage for ps5 Ps4#

There's a wealth of data to examine here, but the bottom line is simple: there is no discernible loading time advantage in using the PlayStation 5's internal solid state storage drive for PS4 games. What is especially curious is that with Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk 2077, we noted that external solutions were actually faster than the internal drive, which seems difficult to believe but was verified with multiple checks. There does seem to be a read speed cap in effect, meaning that NVMe offers no discernible speed increase over SATA. The data speaks for itself in that in general use, a decent SATA SSD is good enough for getting the most out of PlayStation 4 titles. For last-gen, the likes of Battlefield 5, Fallout 4, Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 all stand out as offering up some of the most extended load times out there - and it's where we would expect to see PlayStation 5 to offer up genuine improvements not just via SSD but from its faster CPU too, which should dramatically decrease decompression speeds. Read/write transfer speeds are one thing but it's loading times that are of most importance, so in putting together these tests, we focused on PlayStation 4 titles that are notoriously slow to load. The only real takeaway we have here is that solid state solutions are faster than a mechanical hard drive and that perhaps there is some kind of bandwidth cap in read speeds from the USB ports. However, bizarrely, both SSDs took a long, long time to get the job done and the SATA drive was a few seconds faster than the NVMe equivalent. However, I'll let the table speak for itself when it came to reading that data from each drive and writing it back to the PS5 internal SSD - the hard drive took the same 16 minutes and change. Copying Cyberpunk from the internal SSD to the mechanical hard drive took a somewhat extended 16 minutes 24 seconds - a task that was much faster using a SATA drive (six minutes, 15 seconds) and faster still with the NVMe drive in its USB enclosure (four minutes, 46 seconds). The table below throws up some curious results.

It's likely you'll get very different results copying different games (even if they are the same approximate file size) but we chose to standardise our tests using Cyberpunk 2077's 102GB install, copied away from the internal drive and then back again. And that's certainly the case as we begin the process of testing how our storage solutions operate outside of gaming in terms of basic read/write transfer speeds.

#External storage for ps5 series#

After all, consoles are effectively built from PC-style technologies, but as seen in our Xbox Series X testing, that's not always the case. Now, in theory, you would hope to see loading time and transfer time improvements that slot into line with how each of our components would fare when plugged into a PC. Watch on YouTube Behold the glory of time-lapsed loading tests in this extensive Digital Foundry storage analysis. Long story short: using Cyberpunk 2077 for our tests, we noted no real difference whatsoever. Oh, and we also tested both the front USB-C and rear USB Type-A ports to see if there was any advantage either way.

#External storage for ps5 pro#

In our Xbox Series X tests, we used an OEM Samsung SSD but for PlayStation 5 we went one step further, slotting in a Samsung 980 Pro - one of the very fastest drives on the market.īefore we go on, we should state that the PS5 is a little picky about what kind of USB to SATA adapters it will support - make sure you get one with UASP SATA-III support, otherwise you may get an error telling you to use a USB device with higher bandwidth. However, our alternative options remain the same - an off-the-shelf 5TB Seagate hard drive, a Samsung 870 QVO hooked up via a Sabrent USB to SATA adapter and an NVMe drive housed within an Asus ROG Strix Arion enclosure. It's an exercise we've carried out before of course, when we tested out the same SSD storage options on Xbox Series X, the difference being that Microsoft offers its own external solution that does allow next-gen titles to run.

#External storage for ps5 update#

This week's system software update finally allows users to archive PS5 titles to external hard drives and SSDs, and of course, PS4 titles can be run from plug-in storage too - but what's the best PS5 hard drive option? We decided to put things to the test, stacking up the internal solid-state solution against three alternatives: a passport-style external hard drive, a SATA SSD and an NVMe alternative, housed within an appropriate enclosure.

For a console that pushes technology to the next level in so many respects, there is one defining limitation to the PlayStation 5 hardware - its restrictive 667GB of useable storage.