Is it possible to upgrade my ps4 internal hdd from 2tb to 4tb?

tsobo · 25 Dec 2020 at 11:29

I currently have a 2tb hdd in my ps4. It's running out of space, have been looking online and can't seem to get the right information. Which hdd do I require please to upgrade it?. I know I could use an external hdd but would rather use an internal. Many thanks.

malachi · 25 Dec 2020 at 12:06

Buy any 2.5inch HDD such as this one

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...nternal-hard-drive-st5000lm000-hd-3bm-se.html

Mariusz · 25 Dec 2020 at 14:31

tsobo said:
I currently have a 2tb hdd in my ps4. It's running out of space, have been looking online and can't seem to get the right information. Which hdd do I require please to upgrade it?. I know I could use an external hdd but would rather use an internal. Many thanks.

I believe Digital Foundry did a video on YouTube where they installed an 8TB SSD into a PS4. I upgraded my PS4 Pro HDD to an SSD without issue, as said just make sure you buy the correct size, 2.5".

stoofa · 26 Dec 2020 at 10:46

tsobo said:
I currently have a 2tb hdd in my ps4. It's running out of space, have been looking online and can't seem to get the right information. Which hdd do I require please to upgrade it?. I know I could use an external hdd but would rather use an internal. Many thanks.

The drive cannot be any deeper than 9.5mm which will rule out all >2TB HDD's. If you must have 4TB internally, then you'll need to take the SSD route, so around the £350 - £400 mark.
Alternatively, as you mentioned, external will be a lot cheaper.

DeliciousStorage · 26 Dec 2020 at 16:33

tsobo said:
I currently have a 2tb hdd in my ps4. It's running out of space, have been looking online and can't seem to get the right information. Which hdd do I require please to upgrade it?. I know I could use an external hdd but would rather use an internal. Many thanks.

stoofa said:
The drive cannot be any deeper than 9.5mm which will rule out all >2TB HDD's. If you must have 4TB internally, then you'll need to take the SSD route, so around the £350 - £400 mark.
Alternatively, as you mentioned, external will be a lot cheaper.

To add to this, all >2TB 2.5 hard drives are SMR which is no good for the PS4 as it copies whole games when installing updates.

The best option would be a 3.5 inch non SMR external drive unless you want to pay a lot of money for a 4TB SSD.

tsobo · 27 Dec 2020 at 18:12

stoofa said:
The drive cannot be any deeper than 9.5mm which will rule out all >2TB HDD's. If you must have 4TB internally, then you'll need to take the SSD route, so around the £350 - £400 mark.
Alternatively, as you mentioned, external will be a lot cheaper.

Thanks the one quoted by @malachi is about £140 for 5tb. Is this not the correct one?

andshrew · 27 Dec 2020 at 18:41

tsobo said:
Thanks the one quoted by @malachi is about £140 for 5tb. Is this not the correct one?

No that won't fit, there are no mechanical drives larger than 2TB which will fit internally.

The easiest way to expand it is to buy an external drive such as the Seagate Expansion Portable 4TB (STEA4000400), that will just connect to the console via USB and you can install games to that.

The only way to upgrade the internal drive beyond 2TB is with an SSD, but it's really not worth it given the amount that would cost. Even more so if you only have a base PS4 rather than a PS4 Pro.

DeliciousStorage · 27 Dec 2020 at 19:04

andshrew said:
an external drive such as the Seagate Expansion Portable 4TB (STEA4000400)

That drive is SMR garbage, not ideal for the PS4.

andshrew · 27 Dec 2020 at 19:34

DeliciousStorage said:
That drive is SMR garbage, not ideal for the PS4.

Why is it not ideal when the PS4 will spend the majority of it's time only reading data from the drive. I've been using a 4TB earlier version of that for 4 or 5 years at this point and it has never lost data on the PS4.

DeliciousStorage · 27 Dec 2020 at 21:27

andshrew said:
Why is it not ideal when the PS4 will spend the majority of it's time only reading data from the drive. I've been using a 4TB earlier version of that for 4 or 5 years at this point and it has never lost data on the PS4.

A lot of game updates will make a copy of the whole game before installing. You really don't want to be doing that on an SMR drive with 200GB+ games like Modern Warfare as it will take 4x longer than a regular 3.5 hard drive. I did a full disk write on a WD 4TB portable 2.5 drive and the average write speed was 40 MB/s, which is slower than USB 2 speeds.

andshrew · 28 Dec 2020 at 00:10

DeliciousStorage said:
A lot of game updates will make a copy of the whole game before installing. You really don't want to be doing that on an SMR drive with 200GB+ games like Modern Warfare as it will take 4x longer than a regular 3.5 hard drive. I did a full disk write on a WD 4TB portable 2.5 drive and the average write speed was 40 MB/s, which is slower than USB 2 speeds.

I think I'd need to see some more substantiated evidence to believe that it is actually an issue when the drive is being used in a PS4. Or at least substantial enough of an issue to bother with the hassle of having to use a powered 3.5" external instead.

Anecdotally my near full drive will transfer a 50GB game from internal to external (and vice versa) in roughly 10 minutes which would put it at around 80MB/s which seems reasonable enough for a 2.5" mechanical drive.

DeliciousStorage · 28 Dec 2020 at 00:31

andshrew said:
I think I'd need to see some more substantiated evidence to believe that it is actually an issue when the drive is being used in a PS4. Or at least substantial enough of an issue to bother with the hassle of having to use a powered 3.5" external instead.

Anecdotally my near full drive will transfer a 50GB game from internal to external (and vice versa) in roughly 10 minutes which would put it at around 80MB/s which seems reasonable enough for a 2.5" mechanical drive.

Why would using a 3.5 powered drive be a hassle?

SMR drives will typically have a CMR cache to hide the performance issues, which worked well in this small workload. As soon as that cache is exhausted the performance issues will be very apparent.

andshrew · 28 Dec 2020 at 10:42

DeliciousStorage said:
Why would using a 3.5 powered drive be a hassle?

SMR drives will typically have a CMR cache to hide the performance issues, which worked well in this small workload. As soon as that cache is exhausted the performance issues will be very apparent.

Having to dedicate a power socket to it is inconvenient, and being externally powered means you're more likely to run in to issues when you put the console in rest mode.

You call that a small workload, I'd suggest that's the average write workload you're likely to see while using it on a PS4 with games over 100GB being an exception. Describing these drives as garbage for use with a games console is extremely hyperbolic.

DeliciousStorage · 28 Dec 2020 at 14:59

andshrew said:
Having to dedicate a power socket to it is inconvenient, and being externally powered means you're more likely to run in to issues when you put the console in rest mode.

You call that a small workload, I'd suggest that's the average write workload you're likely to see while using it on a PS4 with games over 100GB being an exception. Describing these drives as garbage for use with a games console is extremely hyperbolic.

Average game size isn't going to matter if you're installing a modern warfare update and it suddenly starts crawling during the copying phase with hours remaining

. It's not in the slightest bit hyperbolic, they have real world performance issues that will affect people enough that you should avoid them if possible. Recommending them for a PS4 is simply bad advice.