External hard drive questions

Nevakonaza · 5 Jul 2020 at 17:45

Hey guys,

I have both xbox one x & PlayStation 4 Pro,both 1TB varient.

I have also 2x 1TB hard drives in USB 3.0 external enclosures (powered) on the way.

I plan to use one of these for each Console, my question is what format does the drives need to be in, or can I simply connect up and format from within the consoles settings?

Also can you install games to the external hard drive just like you can on the consoles internal?
Cheers,

pitaylor · 5 Jul 2020 at 18:50

I bought an external 2TB (USB powered) hard drive for my PS4 a few months back.

This was formatted via the console itself and yes you can install games to the hard drive, also you can transfer games between the internal and external hard drive.

Nevakonaza · 6 Jul 2020 at 00:38

Brilliant, thanks for your reply much appreciated

ic1male · 6 Jul 2020 at 07:57

I’m wondering if the PS5 will have a newer version of its filesystem, so I’ve held off on formatting my USB drive on PS4 just in case. Probably no difference in performance terms but it could be more resilient, although again I’ve never lost data on PS4 ever.

biron_w · 6 Jul 2020 at 09:29

ic1male said:
I’m wondering if the PS5 will have a newer version of its filesystem, so I’ve held off on formatting my USB drive on PS4 just in case. Probably no difference in performance terms but it could be more resilient, although again I’ve never lost data on PS4 ever.

You will need an SSD for PS5 expansion but only certain ones will be allowed https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/ps5-ssd/

ic1male · 6 Jul 2020 at 10:34

biron_w said:
You will need an SSD for PS5 expansion but only certain ones will be allowed https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/ps5-ssd/

You can use external USB to store anything though. PS4 games can be played from it, PS5 games need to be on the SSD. But once you've finished, you can move the PS5 game on to USB to clear some space.