Upgrading the PS4's HDD

[Bitter Almonds]

Okay, I tried looking for other topics on this forum, researched a little bit on-line on other forums, watched a few videos, and now I come to the people whose opinion I trust the most to ask this simple, yet seemingly elusive, set of questions.

Here goes:

I just got a PS4 and want to upgrade its 500GB HDD to a 4TB HDD.

- How do I go about upgrading it step-by-step? (e.g., do I need to format the HDD and the USB flash drive myself or does the PS4 do it automatically?)

- Has anyone had any issues with an upgrade larger than 2TB? Most of my games are still disc-based, so will this upgrade affect the console's ability to use discs? Sleep Mode problems? Overheating problems?

- Anyone recommend a reliable 4TB HDD? I had a Seagate in mind since I've been using Seagate-branded external HDDs since 2010 without issues.


I'm all thumbs when it comes to this type of thing. I can't solder or modify things without breaking them, so any solution or step that involves that is outta the question. The YouTube vids make it seem so easy, but then I read about issues that come up soon after, which are rarely discussed.

If you've made it this far, thank you for your time and any assistance would be appreciated

[broken harbour]

There are countless walkthroughs on the internet on how to do this, here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FJHYAfiYRs

Not sure why anyone would need a 4TB drive, but a quick google search tells me it can be done.

I personally would go for a fast 500GB or 1TB SSD personally, as the loading times in most games are significantly improved.

I haven't heard of any issues after upgrading a hard drive on the console... what issues have you heard of?

[Bitter Almonds]

The issues I've been reading about involve overheating, Sleep Mode not working, the PS4 not recognising the HDD, and the PS4 not copying the discs to the HDD. This is only with HDDs larger than 2TB. I was thinkin' of going with a 4TB HDD because I can see myself downloading a lotta junk - video games, movies, music, pr0n?, whatever - and I can foresee myself running outta space sooner than one would anticipate.

Also, I've been reading conflicting procedures with regards to formatting the HDD and USB flash drive manually to exFAT prior to doing any of these steps. None of the video tutorials I've seen address this

[HydrogLox]

tl;dr

• Look at the Samsung 2TB M9T HDD if you value capacity over performance.
• Look at the Seagate 1TB ST1000LX001 SSHD 32GB flash if you want a potential performance boost and don't mind the inherent SSHD risks (though check here first).
• Look at the Western Digital 1TB WD10SPCX HDD for a conservative upgrade.

I personally would go for a fast 500GB or 1TB SSD personally, as the loading times in most games are significantly improved.

If this is to be believed the PS4 SATA controller caps the SSD gain to about 32% which may not be enough to justify the expense.
See also: Should You Upgrade Your PS4 With an SSD?
Typically depending on the game an SSD will save between 5-15 seconds of loading time per loading sequence.

There is lots of advice to go with an SSHD hybrid instead because of the cost savings but that is only based on performance-after-installation. These drives use a 8/16/32GB SSD as a cache - as far as I'm aware being used as cache is hell-on-earth for NAND flash memory, so that cache is likely going to fail much sooner than a full size SSD drive - at best leaving you with a cache-less HDD (unless a buffer is available - which often seems to be the case).
https://www.sdd.toshiba.com.tw/english/ ... /faq5.aspx

I have heard that NAND flash can wear out over time. What happens if the NAND component in the Toshiba Hybrid Drive reaches its endurance limit? Will data be lost?
Should the user exceed the endurance limit of the NAND flash, the Toshiba MQ01ABDH will continue functioning as a conventional HDD. However, before the NAND flash component reaches the endurance limits, its performance will gradually decline. Due to Toshiba’s NAND flash caching algorithms and data protection mechanisms, Toshiba does not expect an increased risk of data loss resulting from aging of the NAND flash on the Toshiba MQ01ABDH Hybrid Drive during the expected lifetime of a PC.

So personally I remain skeptical about SSHDs unless there is some kind of self imposed best-before-date (2-3 years?); though hypothetically you could just wait for the drive to degrade (i.e. treat an SSHD as a "consumable component") and then back it up and replace it (typically the need for this happens at the most inconvenient time).

However I would concur that capping the upgrade to 1TB might be a good idea as high capacity drives tend to be slower - so if you are already unhappy with loading times a > 1TB HDD is likely going to aggravate the problem (especially as you are restricted to the 2.5 inch form factor).
http://www.gamesradar.com/best-hard-drive-for-ps4/

Samsung 2TB M9T
...
It is no quicker than the hard drive which comes with standard PS4, so this is the option for those with a huge gaming library but aren’t too concerned with their current game loading speeds.

Furthermore (inexpensive) high-capacity drives are usually targeted for low-duty backup or redundant RAID operation (i.e. stored data is typically duplicated elsewhere in case of failure - i.e. they are manufactured as "consumable components").

I had a Seagate in mind since I've been using Seagate-branded external HDDs since 2010 without issues.

Well, count yourself lucky. Just last summer I had to replace a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM0001 after 3 years of light duty. Personally I typically go for Western Digital but I'm under no illusions - all the manufacturers have "bad" batches - e.g.
https://community.wd.com/t/wd1003fzex-c ... ined/16841
http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1741- ... for-gaming

Last September I decided to "modernize" my Thinkpad with a Samsung MZ-7KE512BW SSD 850 PRO 2.5in SATA III [MZ-7KE512BW] and Western Digital WD Blue 2.5 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6GB/S 7.0MM 16MB CACHE [WD10SPCX]. Now clearly due to the presence of the SSD, speed wasn't my primary concern on the WD10SPCX. 7200 rpm drives can generate more heat, more noise and more vibration - so I decided to stick with 5400 rpm. I chose the WD10SPCX over the WD10JPVX because 16 vs 8MB buffer and 7.0 vs 9.5mm height (2 vs 3 platters).

This article uses the WD10SPCX and ST1000LM014 (SSHD 8GB Flash)‡ on a PS4. Again they give the edge to the SSHD - not so sure about their statement regarding an 7200 rpm HDD for "some serious performance enhancements" given how much the PS4 SATA controller throttles SSD performance - especially considering the potential heat/noise/vibration trade-offs with 7200 rpm.

(The WD SSHD equivalent would be the WD10J31X - the good news is that it, just like the Seagate, it comes with a 64MB Buffer in addition to the 8GB flash, so it probably wouldn't be any slower than the stock drive once the flash dies).
(‡ There is also the 32GB Flash ST1000LX001).

So I guess you are going to have to figure out what is most important to you ...

[Bitter Almonds]

Hmm, interesting and way more informative than what I've read and seen so far. It makes me wonder if I should do just that. Rather than get a 4TB HDD, get three or four of them separately and label each one as it fills out.

Would I need to go through the firmware every time I wanted to switch HDDs or could I just switch them up any time I wanted to without having to go through the hassle of backing things up in a completely different HDD?

[HydrogLox]

Would I need to go through the firmware every time I wanted to switch HDDs or could I just switch them up any time I wanted to without having to go through the hassle of backing things up in a completely different HDD?

According to this you should be able to on the same PS4 but of course there is still the hassle of likely having to do a systems software update (again). Additional drive caddies could make the swapping process easier though in other applications I seen people resort to eSata docks - though that level of convenience probably comes at a performance cost.

Interestingly Nyko has the Data Bank for PlayStation®4 that allows the use of 3.5 inch form factor HDDs but even they state:

Nyko recommends only using up to 2TB drives at this time as drives larger than 2TB could cause issues with Rest Mode and other features

Contrary to that 3TB, 4TB and 6TB Hard Drives for the PS4 - How To describes the use of some high capacity drives. Though personally I view high-capacity drives as datacenter food pellets; individually they don't have to be particularly fast as they stripe them anyway and they don't have to be particularly reliable/durable as they mirror them anyway - but they have to be cheap.

You should probably just enjoy your stock 500GB‡ for now and keep an eye open for a good deal on a good quality vanilla 1TB, an extra caddy and 4TB USB backup storage. If you check amazon reviews of any HDD brand/model you'll probably notice that there are plenty of negative reviews everywhere - it isn't that uncommon to get a dud and dealing with RMA and warranty claims is a pain but most people get lucky.

‡ likely an HGST which seem to do well on average in datacenters (WDs not so much, though their sample is significantly smaller)

[Bitter Almonds]

I think I might do that - get a 1TB HDD and get another 1TB HDD as needed. I'll switch it up between the two once they're filled.

One last set of questions with regards to external HDDs and USB flash drives:

- Does the PS4 allow for backing up stuff on an external HDD without deleting the stuff in the PS4 HDD?
- Would I need to format the external HDD to exFAT or does the PS4 do it automatically when it's connected?

Thanks, again, for the time taken in answering my inquiries.

[HydrogLox]

Disclaimer - I don't actually own a PS4 at this point (and haven't in the past).

Does the PS4 allow for backing up stuff on an external HDD without deleting the stuff in the PS4 HDD?

I don't have enough context here because you may be referring to some arcane PS4 practice. But in general people delete stuff before backing up:

• to ensure that the backup fits on the backup destination (it's small or almost full)
• to remove a bunch of junk they don't want to include in the backup (and waste storage, backup/restore time on)
• to shorten the time required to perform a backup and restore

Going by this game installs can be included in your backup since 2.50 - i.e. you don't have to re-download everything later on. The downside is that it can take 3-6 hours to backup a 500GB HDD and require a similar time period to later restore it. As far as I can tell it isn't possible to backup individual game installs (the game saves are a different matter). Also full backups usually leave the source intact - so I wouldn't expect anything on the PS4 HDD to be invalidated after a full backup. Given that each backup is automatically named you should be able to store multiple backups on a sufficiently large external drive.

Would I need to format the external HDD to exFAT or does the PS4 do it automatically when it's connected?

Based on the manual it has to be FAT or exFAT formatted. So I wouldn't expect it be able to actually format the external drive (too risky from a support perspective) - it will probably just reject the device. So I would expect that the external drive has to be prepared elsewhere.

[Bitter Almonds]

Excellent! Thank you very much for taking the time to explain things.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

I got one of those Seagate drives in a portable case. They are cheaper than the ones without a case. All you do is crack them open. The you can put the original Sony drive in the case and use it elsewhere.

[Bitter Almonds]

Another thing just dawned on me. What if the console conks out and I buy a replacement PS4? How would I transfer the games from the old HDDs into the new PS4?

[DaneSaga]

If you couldn't access the backup up and restore feature from the console itself then you'd be out of luck. The PS4 HDD (as well as PS3) is encrypted and uses Nix filesystems, thus certainly not readable by a windows system or anything.
You can upload up to 10gb of save data to Sony's cloud servers if you are a Plus subscriber, though not full games.

[Bitter Almonds]

Would I be able to back everything up into an external HDD and then transfer them to a new PS4

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Just upload your game saves to the cloud. You can re-download any owned games again through your psn account. I'd just get the one month card if you only need it for psn cloud access to set up a new hard drive.

[DaneSaga]

Yes you can backup the entire contents of your HDD onto an external. You cannot select individual titles though, so it's more akin to a restore point.

[Bitter Almonds]

Would you then be able to transfer the backed up data from the external HDD to a new PS4 later on

[DaneSaga]

yeah. The only stipulation is that you need to be online and signed into your PSN account before starting transfer process.

[Bitter Almonds]

Schweeet

Thanks, guys. I know these are dumb questions, but I just wanna be sure and I trust your opinions.