How To Install New Hdd In Ps4

You Can Upgrade The Standard Hard Drive Equipped Within The Ps4 To A Solid

ByLewis Painter, Senior Staff Writer| 28 Nov 2018

• Back up your save data2
• Remove top plate3
• Slide out HDD from PS45
• Remove HDD from frame6
• Attach SSD to frame7
• Insert SSD into PS4 and close case8
• Put PS4 software on a USB stick9
• Plug in USB and boot PS4 in Safe Mode10
• Select Initialise PS4 11
• Follow on-screen instructions12
• Restore game save data13
• More stories

The Easy Way: How To Expand Your Ps4 Drive Via An External Usb 30 Hdd

The easiest way to increase the storage of your PS4, whether it be the original model, 2016 refresh or a PS4 Pro, is to add a USB 3.0 hard drive to your setup.

Any USB 3.0 drive will do the job and the PS4 supports drives up to 8TB in size.

We chose a dedicated PS4 edition of the Seagate Game Drive with 4TB of space. It’s great value at under £100 and is designed to match the PS4 perfectly.

Another great alternative is a WD_Black P10 Game Drive, which is specifically designed for gamers and costs only a little more for up to 5TB.

Whichever you choose, to get it work with your PS4, just plug it into any of the three USB 3.0 ports. We chose one of the rear ports to tuck it out of the way.

You then need to head to the Settings menu in order to format the drive to work as external storage. Head to Devices, then USB Storage Devices. You should see your new drive listed on the next screen.

The PS4 will automatically set your external drive to be the default to install games on.

If you want to use your internal drive instead, go back into the Settings menu, head to Storage and press Options. You will have the option to choose between the internal and external drive as the game installation location.

Format Your Usb Drive And External Hard Drive

Note: you only need to format your external drive if you want to backup all your game data.

Format your USB drive and external hard drive in FAT32. On Mac, you can do that by hitting the erase button inside the Disk Utility app. Windows users need to right-click the drive in the My Computer window and select format.

You May Like: Dolphin Emulator Ps4 Controller Profile

Western Digital Black Performance Hdd

With up to 1TB of storage running at 7200 RPM, you get an extremely fast high-capacity mobile hard drive, offering the perfect storage solution for a PS4 gamers. Backed by an industry leading 5-year limited warranty, WD Black 2.5-inch Hard Drives combine performance and capacity with the reliability of a brand you can trust.

WD Black 2.5-inch Hard Drives are purpose-built and tested to ensure they can handle the high-performance tasks you need. With up to 1TB of capacity, you get the space you need for your games downloadable content, large cache sizes for fast load times, and 7200 RPM-Class drive for desktop-level performance.

WD Black 2.5-inch PC Hard Drives are tested under more strenuous conditions over a longer period when compared to other standard hard drives. This comprehensive testing ensures an overall quality benchmark for a stable, high performance storage solution backed by an industry leading 5-year limited warranty.

Maximum Storage Capacity

Only 1tb storage capacity is available for this model.

Basic Features

Preparations To Ps4 Hard Drive Upgrade

Before you are going to upgrade PS4 hard drive to a bigger one, figure out what you need.

• PS4 full-size system
• A computer connected to the Internet
• External storage device with at least 1GB of free space
• Officially supported replacement hard drive. Only the 2.5-inch internal type * and Serial ATA internal hard drives are officially supported with the PS4 system.

If you prefer to manually change the PS4 hard drive on your own without any clone or backup software, you may follow the below tips to do the PS4 hard drive replace work:

You May Like: Share Ps Now With Family

Solid State Hybrid Drive

This is an innovative solution meant to be a compromise between speed, capacity and price. With this hard drive solution youll get nearly the performance of SSD and the capacious space of HDD. All for an adequate price thats usually not $10 higher than a regular hard drive.

Solid state hybrid drives, or SSHDs, are a blending of the traditional hard drive and the new solid state drive technologies. If you have been looking at upgrading your PS4 internal hard drive, you may have come across the term SSHD. This is a new marketing term that was coined by Seagate to essentially label what had previously been referred to as hybrid hard drives. This new term can lead to confusion in the market as buyers can mistake these for full solid-state drives .

So an SSHD is basically a hard drive and SSD in one, which is why its called hybrid. The drive appears as a single device to PS4 system, and the SSD part is just used for temporary storage to speed things up: your data is stored long-term on the mechanical disks.

SSHD for PS4

An SSHD is still slower than any SSD, but its a good chunk faster than a plain old hard disk. Basically, if you want lots of storage at a reasonable price, an SSHD is a good choice. If your priority is speed and you want PS4 system to be more responsive, go for an SSD.

The SSHD is the best PS4 hard drive replacement for the majority of users. As for enthusiasts and power users, an SSD is the priority.

Find And Remove The Plastic Hard Drive Cover

Unplug your PS4 Pro from the power source and your TV and move to a flat smooth Surface. This will make sure you avoid losing any of the Parts associated with replacing the Hard Drive.

Turn your PS4 Pro around to the back side of the console. You will notice a plastic cover near the Ethernet port. This is the covering the hard drive bay. Remove it using the small tab near the Ethernet port which should cause the panel to pop right off.

Read Also: Is Genshin Impact Free On Ps4

Procedure 2 Remove The Old Ps4 Internal Hard Drive

Step 1. Power off PS4 and unplug the AC power cord, and then disconnect the other cables from the system.

Step 2. Place both of your hands on top of the hard drive cover and slide it to the left. Lift the right side first when lifting and removing the cover.

Step 3. Remove the screw and pull the internal hard drive toward the front of the system to remove it

Step 4. Remove the four screws with a Phillips screwdriver from the sides of the hard drive case.

Toshiba 2tb Ps4 Hard Drive

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. , a committed technology leader, produced a great PS4 hard drive replacement designed basically for use in notebook PCs, all-in-one and slim-line desktop systems, and other applications requiring high capacity storage and 2.5-inch mobile-class durability.

The MQ04ABD200 dual-disk model delivers 2tb of storage capacity in a compact 2.5-inch, 9.5mm height form factor. The drives 6 Gbit/s SATA interface and 5,400 rpm performance, combined with a large 128 MB buffer, result in a 34 percent increase in maximum transfer rates and a 50 percent improvement in power efficiency compared to Toshibas previous 1TB mobile-class model generation, MQ01ABD100.

You can use this drive as an external hard drive for PS4, it will work pretty well. Moreover Toshiba offers a 3-year limited warranty on this drive. This makes it a very appealing deal for PS4 users.

Basic Features

• Single-layer caching system

You May Like: Connect A Bluetooth Headset To Ps4

The Harder Way: Replace The Hdd Inside Your Ps4

Another way to expand the storage of your PS4 is to replace the hard drive inside the machine. It’s not as complicated as it sounds and could be ideal if you, say, want to add a solid state drive for speedier access.

You will have to take at least part of the console apart. Sony makes it very simple for you, but you will still find the process a little long-winded. The easy part though is choosing a drive.

The PS4 uses a 2.5-inch SATA HDD, the type of which you’ll find in a laptop. However, not any old 2.5-inch drive will work. To fit a PS4 it will need to be no greater than 9.5mm in depth or it will be too big for the hard drive enclosure drawer.

There are some out there that will meet the specifications, at around the £50 mark. We opted for a Western Digital WD10JPVX – an older 5400RPM Blue drive with a 7mm depth which fits nicely – but there are plenty of more recent SATA III alternatives.

You can even opt for an SSD/HDD hybrid drive, such as the 1TB Seagate FireCuda gaming drive that’s .

Some have also suggested pure SSD equivalents, which ramp up load speeds dramatically, but can be prohibitively expensive if you’re trying to increase storage rather than shrink it.

Why Do You Need To Replace The Ps4 Internal Hard Drive

The reasons for PS4 hard drive replacement include the following situations:

• The current internal hard drive doesnt have enough space and you need to use a new hard drive to increase the storage space to your system.
• The old PS4 hard drive slows down and you want to use a new hard drive to increase the performance speed.
• Your PS4 hard drive is damaged or corrupted.
• And more.

However, do you know how to replace PS4 hard drive? MiniTool Software writes this post to show you how to replace PS4 hard drive.

Don’t Miss: How To Record Party Chat With Elgato Ps4

Install The Latest Ps4 System Software

To get your new hard drive up and running, you’ll first need to initialise your PS4 Pro and perform a new installation of the system software. Head to the PS4 System Software Update page to download the update file – make sure you use the larger file listed under ‘Perform a New Installation of the System Software’ and follow all the instructions as listed.

With the initialisation complete, you can go into Settings and select System Storage Management to confirm your upgraded hard drive capacity, and that’s it – you’re ready to download/install your games and get playing!

How To Upgrade Your Ps4 Hard Drive To 4tb Or More

– When the PlayStation 4 was first released, 500GB of storage seemed ample. It soon turned out not to be, however, with game file sizes expanding at a fair rate of knots.

Games, like , can easily top 100GB. That doesn’t leave too much space on your default drive for many other games.

Even if you have the enhanced version of the PS4 or the PS4 Pro, each with 1TB drives, they will struggle.

Luckily, there are two options for increasing the storage space on your PS4 or PS4 Pro. One is blindingly simple, the other slightly more complicated. They both work very effectively though and aren’t too costly.

squirrel_widget_175998

You May Like: How To Set Up Controller For Project64

Remove The Case Of Your External Hard Drive

This step is only necessary if you got an external hard drive to put into your PS4. Use a flathead screwdriver to carefully open up the case. I found it easier to open it up on different spots first and then open it up completely with a larger screwdriver.

Once the case is open, you need to remove the drive by pulling up the back on the opposite site of the USB plug. If your hard drive has two screws on each of the longer sides, you need to remove them. Now, you need to remove the adapter from the drive and your done. At the end, you can use the same case for the hard drive you remove from your PS4.

Ps4 Compatible Hard Drive Upgrade

Be sure that all the PS4 hard drive replacements included in our list are fully compatible with all models of PS4. But eventually, you have to learn how to pick a PS4 compatible hard drive in case you want to make your own research.

So, in order to choose the right hard drive upgrade for your PS4, you need to make sure its compatible with the PS4 storage upgrade standards. These standards are specified by Sony. Only the drives that meet all of them can be used for the upgrade purpose. They are:

• Support of SATA interface. This is mandatory as PS4 motherboard only accept SATA connection.
• Storage capacity is not less than 160gb and not more than 8tb. This is also mandatory. This helps you know what size of SSD to get if you want a cheap option. 128gb SSD doesnt work with PS4.
• Drives height is not more than 9.5mm. This is optional if you have the standard model of PS4. You can bypass this standard by using a Data Bank accessory. As for PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim, meeting this standard is mandatory.
• Designed in 2.5-inch form factor. This is optional for the standard version of PS4 as it can be worked around by using a Data Bank solution. PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim models dont have this option, so its a mandatory condition.

Once the drive meets all these standards, youve to relax its relevant to be a DIRECT hard drive upgrade for PS4.

Don’t Miss: How To Take Cover In Gta 5 Ps4

How To Reinstall Ps4 System Software

If the PS4 system software update fails, you may need to reinstall the PS4 system software. This operation can help you fix many PS4 errors such as su-30625-6, CE-36329-3, SU-41350-3, etc. How to reinstall PS4 system software without data loss?

Step 1. Back up your PS4 data including games, user information, applications.

Since reinstalling the PS4 system is the same as a factory reset and will restore your system to its original state, so please make sure that you have backed up all important data in advance. You can back up them to the online storage or an external storage device.

Step 2. Reinstall PS4 system software in Safe Mode.

Step 3. Restore the backup that you have created.

Tip:

One: Find The Right Replacement

The first thing to do is to buy your replacement hard drive or SSD. The PS4 uses a 2.5-inch SATA format for hard disks and SSDs, and its quite an archaic design now its generally only used for more affordable drives.

Any drive you install into your PS4 needs to be under 9.5mm tall thanks to the size of the caddy that lives inside the PS4, which protects the drive and keeps it in place. This is no problem for SSDs, but it does prove to be a little limiting as many 4TB hard drives are a shade too chunky.

When looking for a new hard disk or SSD there are plenty of things to bear in mind click here to read our guide on the pros and cons of hard disks, SSDs and solid-state hybrid drives.

There are a few rules of thumb if youre in a rush. Hard disks are the more affordable options but even 7,200rpm drives wont have great performance at best youll get a slight speed boost over the consoles existing drive, at worst youll just equal it while improving capacity. A 1TB or 2TB hard disk will cost you around $60 or less than $80 .

An SSD will deliver a more significant improvement to loading times and game performance, especially on a PS4 Pro console, but SSDs are more expensive 1TB and 2TB models tend to cost around twice as much.

Also Check: How To Dunk On 2k20 Ps4

Remove Old Hard Drive

• The hard drive is located at the back of the PS4 Pro.

• Refer to the official Sony Playstation site for information on where the hard drive is on other PS4 here.

Backup Your Ps4s Saved Data Settings And Game Files

Alright, lets finally start with the upgrade. First, you should backup ally our data, so that you dont lose anything during the process. Plug in your external hard drive and head over to Settings > System > Backup and Restore > Back up PS4. By default, all your saved data and settings will be backed up. If you also want to save all your downloaded games, then make sure you have enough space on your hard drive and check Applications. Continue with selecting Next. Your PS4 is now going to restart.

After the restart, your PS4 will start with the backup. Depending on how much data youve got the process might take a couple hours. While you wait, you can go on and prepare everything else.

Also Check: How To Get Out Of Safe Mode On Ps4