Tuesday, March 26, 2024

How To Use External Hard Drive On Ps4

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Transfer Recordings From Ps4 To Pc Using Youtube

How to use External Hard Drive on PS4!

For this method to work, you need to have a simple YouTube account. Then follow this method:

  • In PS4 menu, go to Library.
  • From Side menu, go to Applications.
  • Now go to Capture Gallery.
  • Here select your desired clip/ recording of a game and wait for few moments.
  • On next screen, you will see different sharing options.
  • From these options, select .
  • Adjust the Privacy, Title and Tags and then click on .
  • Wait for some time till the video is uploaded to YouTube.
  • Now go on PC to your own channel/ playlist and select the Video.
  • You can download this using IDM or any other YouTube Video Downloader.

As an alternate, you may also copy these to a USB Storage Device.

Ps4 Drive Can’t Be Recognized By Windows Pc

I swapped out the SSD from my laptop and into my PS4 and I wanted to put the 500GB Hard drive from my PS4 in my laptop, I hooked the drive up to my main rig to format but I’m running into a problem. The drive isn’t showing up in my Windows Explorer. Also when I go to Disk Management, the only option I have is to convert to a Dynamic Disk… —forums.tomshardware.com

If you want to make your PS4 console run faster, you may like to upgrade it to SSD. Then, some of you may be reluctant to waste the old PS4 disk and want to use it on your PC. In this situation, you will definitely encounter the problem that the PS4 drive can’t be used on PC directly.

The PS4 drive will not show up in the File Explorer and it displays weird partitions in Disk Management like the following picture:

The reason is that the PS4 drive uses a format not recognized by Windows. Therefore, the way to solve this problem is to reformat this drive. Then, read the following content to get two ways to reformat the PS4 drive for PC.

Best Ps4 External Desktop Hard Drives

Reasons to avoid

The Seagate Expansion prizes simplicity and effectiveness over flashier features. Once the power cable and USB 3.0 cable are plugged in, youre ready to go the PS4 will pick up the drive and you can start storing.

The Expansion has a subtle exterior thats admittedly made from plastic, and theres a little give in the material but its strong enough to be plonked next to your PS4. On the inside, it uses hard disks with speeds that closely match those in PS4 consoles so you wont get much improvement, but it wont slow you down.

It isnt quick or packed with features, but its capable and its various capacities are a little cheaper than the equivalents in the WD Elements range. Its an affordable, unfussy option.

Reasons to avoid

The WD Elements is available in a broad range of capacities, from 2TB to 14TB, and on the inside theres little to choose between this unit and the Seagate Expansion. They both offer similar performance levels to the PS4, and so this unit will add a huge amount of space without slowing the console down.

Elements drives tend to be a little more expensive than Seagates products because its exterior is better sleeker and stronger. If youre willing to pay extra for that, then the WD is a good mid-range option, but be aware that the Seagate offers similar speed for a little less.

Reasons to avoid

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Format To Exfat In File Explorer

  • 1. When you plugged in the external drive, Press Win+E to open file explorer, if it shows Quick Access in Windows 10, do like this to change it to File Explorer, like we get used to it in Windows 7.
  • 2. Now Right-click on the external disk, and select “Format”
  • 3. In the new window, select exFAT from the File System dropdown menu and leave Quick Format checked click Start to Format.
  • 4. Restore the backed up files to this disk again, may spend some time according to the file size.

What Isnt Compatible With Ps4

How To Use An External Hard Drive With Your PlayStation 4

Some features will make an external hard drive incompatible with the PS4

  • Partitioned drive will not work on PS4 because the PS4 system cant handle partitions. Ensure that your drive has only one volume.
  • Wireless external hard drives because the PS4 system cant recognize them. Your hard drive needs to have a wired connection.
  • No NAS drives since PS4 does not support Network Attached Storage hard drives.
  • Dual-layer external hard drives can connect to PS4, but the PS4 system can only recognize the first layer and ignore the second so that you will lose half of the storage capacity.
  • No hub connection, so if youre trying to use a hard drive with the USB hub built-in or an additional hub to connect with your PS4, it is unlikely to work.

It would help if you also kept in mind that the PS4 system will completely format and encrypt your external hard drive once you start the formatting process. You cant use the hard drive for PC or MAC use, nor will you be able to recover any files that were previously on the hard drive after it is formatted.

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First: Select The Right External Drive For Your Ps4

If you don’t have an external drive handy, you’ll need to pick up a new one for your PS4. Thankfully, there aren’t a ton of requirements.

To use an external drive with a PlayStation 4, it must meet these qualifications:

  • Be SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps or later. In effect, this means that any USB 3.0 or later drive will work . USB 2 is not supported.
  • Have at least 250GB of space, with a maximum of 8TB.

If you go for a hard disk drive, we’d recommend picking up one that’s at least 2TB. This is the lowest capacity that major manufacturers still sell external HDDs at on Amazon and should give you plenty of room. For a boost in loading times, you can also opt for an external SSD, though these cost a lot more.

Also, be sure you get a drive that uses a USB-A plug to connect. Some external drives use USB-C on both ends, which won’t work on the PS4 without an adapter. See our list of the best PS4 external drives for some options if you don’t already have one in mind.

What You Can Store On A Ps5 External Hard Drive

The way the PS5 splits up external storage is a little weird. Following the instructions above, your external hard drive will be set to store and play PS4 games. Thats all it can do, however. Unlike to PS4, you cant save screenshots or save data to the same external hard drive that you save games to. By default, your PS5 will save all screenshots, video captures, and save data to the internal storage. Thankfully, theres a way around this limitation.

If you want to store your captures on an external hard drive, simply plug in the hard drive and dont format it. Then, head to your Library and find Media Gallery. Once youve found the captures you want, you can offload them by selecting them and choosing Copy to USB Drive. Similarly, you can back up your data to external storage by following Settings > System > System Software > Back Up and Restore. Even though you can copy captures to external storage, you cant do it while PS4 games are installed on external storage. You have to choose one or the other.

As for games, you can only install backward-compatible PS4 games to external storage. PS5 games require the consoles internal storage. Some PS4 games will benefit from faster loading times on the PS5s internal storage. However, if you install the game to external storage, load times will be limited by the external drives speed.

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Format External Drive In Ps4

How to add external storage and format it in your PS4:

  • Plug the USB drive into the USB port on your PS4.
  • Open PS4 and go to Settings.
  • Select Devices.
  • Choose the external hard disk youve just connected.
  • Click on the Format as Extended Storage button.
  • The system prompt saying This device will be formatted as extended storage will appear. Now, click Format.
  • Wait a second and youll see This device will be formatted as extended storage. Are you sure you want to continue? Now, click Yes.
  • Wait for the formatting process to complete. You cant remove the disk from PS4 during formatting.
  • When you see the prompt message: This device has been formatted as extended storage. You should click on the OK button to finish formatting.
  • Choose The Location For Installed Games

    HOW TO USE AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE WITH PS4

    If you like, you can choose where PS4 games install to by default. You can’t change this while games are downloading, so it’s smart to set this up as soon as you’ve connected your drive.

    Visit Settings > Storage and hit the Options button on your controller to show a new menu. Select Application Install Location here, and set it to Extended Storage. This will configure your external drive as the default save location.

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    How To Access Ps4 Hard Drive On Pc

    One of the major issues in connecting a PS4 hard drive to a PC is the different format of the PS4 drive. Due to this reason, a PS4 is not going to appear in a normal way in Windows Explorer. The issue in this case is that you will need to format your PS4 hard drive in order to be read by your PC. However, we will look into formatting and re-formatting in the later sections.

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    How To Transfer Your Ps4 Games To An External Hard Drive On Ps5

    If you already have games PS4 games installed on your PS5, you can easily transfer them to external storage. Follow Settings > Storage > Console Storage > Games and Apps to see all of the games and applications you have installed on your PS5s internal storage. Switch to the Items You Can Move tab and select the games and/or applications you want to move to external storage. If you want to move everything, just press Select All.

    Once you have everything you want to move, select Move and wait. Although weve tested transferring apps to external storage and didnt run into issues, some are reporting that large transfers may inexplicably fail. If thats the case, try breaking up your transfer into smaller chunks and see if that solves your issues.

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    How To Format/ Reformat Ps4 Hard Drive For Pc

    Most of the times you will need to format a PS4 hard drive. The reasons may include:

    • You replaced an SSD with HDD for PS4 and now want to use this HDD as an external drive.
    • Windows is not detecting your PS4 HDD and you want to format it.
    • For data recovery, if your PS4 HDD is malfunctioning.

    There are a number of methods out there to format a PS4 HDD. However, the most basic and easy ones are using a Partition Tool or Disk Management.

    How To Move Applications To The External Hard Drive

    How to Use an External HDD on PS4 the Right Way

    you now have added the external HDD to your PS4, and you may want to move the installed applications to the external storage to clear more space for your system storage. Its pretty easy! Check it out:

    1) Go to PS4 Settings> Storage.

    2) Select the storage where those applications are currently located in, generally the System Storage, and select Applications.

    3) Press the OPTIONSbutton and select Move to Extended Storage.

    4) Select the applications you want to move, or select Select All to select all the applications by one click.

    5) Select Move.

    6) Select OK to confirm.

    Then you can check those applications in the external storage now, and spare more space for your system storage.

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    Setting The Default Storage

    Now that your external hard drive is formatted correctly, it will be the default destination for any games your purchase or download. Its faster to keep your external hard drive as the default storage instead of the internal storage. However, you can change this in the settings if you prefer to use internal storage instead.

    How To Use/connect External Hard Drives On Ps4

    Just take your external hard-drive and connect it with the USB cable. With the 4.50 version firmware upgrade, your PS4 will easily read the external HDD, once it is plugged into the PS4. After a successful connection, your PS4 will display the device under USB Storage Devices.

    The device might be displayed unsupported. Dont fret about it. This happens to everyone installing a new drive to their PS4s.

    You need to format the external drive before its ready for installing games. While you can use any external drive, we recommend using a game drive. It is basically an external hard drive but with firmware requiring no external power.

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    How To Choose The Best External Hard Drive For Your Ps4

    What should you look for in a PS4 hard drive?

    Interface type: Any USB 3 drive of almost any size will work 250GB is the minimum capacity and a whopping 8TB the maximum. Neither the PS4 nor PS4 Pro support USB 3.1 gen 2 or USB Type C, so dont worry about spending extra on a drive that sports these newer interface standards.

    Portable or desktop? For conveniences sake, wed recommend going for a portable external hard drive. The portability isnt actually that useful, but the one USB 3 connection will handle both data transfer and power, so you wont need an external power supply.

    Right now, there are only two reasons to choose a desktop external hard drive. First, they can run to larger capacities: even the biggest portable drives max out at 5TB, while desktop drives go up to the full 8TB maximum capacity. Youd have to have a massive games library, though, to make that a deciding factor. Otherwise, some desktop drives have a 7,200RPM spindle speed, where portable drives usually only manage 5,400RPM. This can mean slightly better performance, and slightly shorter loading times.

    READ NEXT: Best external hard drives for Xbox One

    How much storage space do you need?

    Here’s a look at some top-selling games for PS4 on Amazon, and how much room they take up on your hard drive :

    Game storage requirements PS4

    190GB

    Is it worth spending extra on an SSD?

    Format Your External Hdd Or Ssd On Your Windows Pc Or Laptop

    How to Increase PS4 Slim Storage using External Hard Drive

    There are a couple of easy methods for drive formatting on Windows, and they dont change much these instructions are for Windows 10, but they should be applicable for the last few versions of Microsofts operating system.

    The easiest method involves plugging the drive into your PC or laptop and opening the File Explorer the screen where you can navigate recent files and key folders. If you click on the This PC shortcut, youll hopefully see your external drive connected as a hard disk, right alongside your systems main hard drive or SSD. If you see it, right-click, select Format, and then choose the exFAT option and start the process. Thats the only thing youll need to really change unless you want to rename the drive, and using the Quick Format setting is fine.

    If you dont see your external drive in the File Explorer, its likely using a file system that the PC cant read like the PS4s own, encrypted Extended Storage system. If this is the case, keep the drive plugged in, right click on the This PC shortcut in the File Manager and click Manage. Once this new window has opened, head to the Disk Management section.

    You should see your drive at the bottom of the window itll be the one in black, rather than navy blue, and itll be described as Unallocated. Right-click it, choose the option to Initialise the drive, and click through the box that appears. You dont have to change anything.

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    Scenarios When Ps4 External Hard Drive Not Recognized

    Before we dive into the core reasons, it is better to review some basic aspects that could point to the real core issues.

    • Is it like your PS4 external HDD wasn’t even working from the very beginning?
    • Is it like one day suddenly, your PS4 external HDD stopped working and no longer recognized/showing up?

    If you want to find answers to the above questions, then you are in the right place.

    Two: System Of Playstation 4 Should Be Version 450 Or Later

    The system of your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro must be updated to version 4.50 or later. That is simply because Sony added the external HDD support to PS4 when the 4.50 version was released early in 2017.

    If you have an older system on your PS4, youll need to update it to the latest version before you can add a PS4 hard drive externally.

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    Format Usb Using Professional Partition Manager

  • Get MiniTool Partition Wizard and install it properly on your PC.
  • Connect the external hard drive to your PC through a USB interface.
  • Launch partition manager.
  • Select the external drive for PS4.
  • Choose Format Partition feature from the left sidebar.
  • Select exFAT from the drop-down list of File System.
  • Click on the OK button in Format Partition window.
  • Click Apply in the upper left corner.
  • Choose Yes to allow changes.
  • Wait for the format to complete.
  • Please note that if the drive is new, you should select the unallocated space on it and select Create Partition from the left sidebar.

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