Topic: PS4 is very slow!

Hi! Decided to do a new post since I found out there's not a problem with Far Cry 5 but with my PS4!
Far Cry freezes to load every 5 minutes! Fortnite suddenly blocks the screen (particularly when falling down the bus)! Fifa 18 freezes the screen 10 seconds then spends one minute with the players running at 2x speed!
Already booted up Safe Mode and did the 5th option, the one that organizes the disk! But the same thing happened in Fortnite and Far Cry is super slow loading!
Is this the end of my old PS4?

@AFCC how much free space do you have, if it's too low it can affect the performance of the system

@FullbringIchigo about 100gb! Upgraded to a 1tb more than a year ago and never had problems until this week!

117.2gb to be exact

@FullbringIchigo I deleted 50gb of games to give it a bit more space!
Far Cry 5 loading for a plane side mission took around 2 and a half minutes which is unbearably slow!!!!

Edit: did the mission, the plane stops to load, hit a tree, another unbearable load after losing the mission!

I’ve noticed this as well. Only been happening for the last 3-4 days.
Everything is taking just a bit longer.
Was there some sort of update I don’t know about?

@Fight_Teza_Fight well I don't know man but it makes Far Cry unplayable... going to try other games now but it doesn't seem like anybody else has this problem!

@AFCC I haven’t noticed anything in game, but I’ve got loading screens coming up whenever I’m going through different screens on the menu.

Might be time to give the PS4 a proper clean.

@Fight_Teza_Fight thing is I did it like 2/3 weeks ago :/ opened it up, cleaned it the best I could! The sound of the fan was so LOUD before but now it's like the PS is new!! So I don't know what happened...only FC5 is unplayable, the others just take time to load anda have minor chugs

I must admit, I do find the consoles relatively 'slow' for downloading on. I certainly don't get the 'speeds' my internet is capable of delivering - even though they are all hardwired directly into the router. I think it must have to do with the write speed on the discs - not able to write at the speed the internet is capable of but its always seemed 'slower' than expected.

I can't tell you if the Pro is better or not as I really don't download frequently enough to have an overall impression. Of late, I have been spending more time on my Xbox X too and recently bought 2 games (Titanfall 2 for ~£5 and Division Gold edition for ~£22) in the spring sale which takes my total of bought 'digital' games to 3/4 this generation. Most of the IGC/GwG games I have installed are done in the background - whilst playing something else so don't notice how long these take.

Mechanical disc drives are not going to last forever and may well be getting a bit worn. Another aspect that can slow them down is by a lot of deleting and installing games without defragging. Each HDD has multiple sectors and each new install starts at a new sector. If you delete a game from an earlier sector, it has gaps and installing new games can lead to a parts of the games in different sectors. Defragmenting (at least on PC) pulls all the like/connected items into one so you don't have say music files in lots of different sectors but in one complete section.

Its possible that FarCry5 could be in multiple different sectors because its having to slot in to the various different smaller sectors from deleted games. I don't know if the consoles have a way to defragment...

EDIT: Found these links which may help
http://www.gadgethelpline.com/rebuild-sony-ps4-database/
https://www.psu.com/news/how-and-why-you-should-rebuild-your-...

@BAMozzy I already did rebuild the database and it was very quick but I didn't have any improvements!
I timed it and when I press continue it takes 4:40 min to load Far Cry 5. Also the side mission took 2:13 min to load...
Fortnite br was like a 2 min load maximum now it's 5 min plus!
Don't know maybe the HDD is really busted but I find it weird! Brand new 1 year ago, worked fine all year and now...don't know maybe I should invest in a pro? But I don't have a 4k tv so I guess it's a waste in that aspect

@AFCC it is possible that it's the HDD, if as i assume you replaced your original internal one then it could just be that the HDD is playing up, perhaps the last update isn't fully compatible with it or perhaps it's the wrong speed

it's one of the reason i never changed mine and use a external HDD instead

if you can try putting the original back in and see if that's any better, if not then it could be a hardware issue

@FullbringIchigo maybe I need to change hdd, install Far Cry, pop in the save and try and see if the game works!

Everything from loading friends list to loading messages have been slow. It's been like that for me for over month now. The notification even doesn't pop up when friends login sometimes.

@BAMozzy https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/20/16174374/playstation-4-down...

That might explain why some PS4 download speeds can be slow. All to do with the PS4 having a small "receive window" when anything was running in the background.

@AFCC If its the data from the disc you may have left some material on the lens when you cleaned it - i would check this right now!

Otherwise I had this issue on my vanilla ps4 but my issue was inherent throughout and got gradually worse to the point I needed to swap out with almost every game. Dont run anything in the background especially the web browser it destroys system memory. Turn off all notifications. Dont open messages before playing a game. Defrag your hard drive every few installs and deletes (this is quick if its once a month as the blocks are already in place for your most played games from the previous defrag)

The self prescribed issue I had was an underperforming cpu or a strangling of data in the ps4. I had one of the first runs of ps4. Complex games requiring the internet would crash regularly, single player games had the odd issue, whilst indie games ran mostly issue free.

I wonder if there a geek bench tool for measuring performance of a ps4?

Edit) my problems got so bad I couldnt leave the ps4 in rest mode, all update installs were manual and I even changed my profile to a basic static profile which helped alot actually (metal slug I think). Bad times I remember them well.

@themcnoisy Forgive my ignorance —What’s involved with “defraging” the hard drive?

@AFCC Before changing the internal HDD I'd install the game in an external HDD and try it.

Didn't realise you could defrag the PS4?

A defrag (or defragging) is a process on computers that does a clean-up of the data and memory on hard drives to free up space and clean out issues on memory. Which is a common maintenance tool for PC's.

A quick Google search and it turns out that one of the features of the Sony PS4 Safe Mode menu is a Rebuild Database option which is version of a defrag. Which I think the OP has already done.

@JohnnyShoulder Ahaaa, makes sense. Thanks. I’ve only rebuilt my Ps4 database once in the last 4 years, and that was because the electricity went out in the neighborhood while it was powered on and the PS4 went through a mandatory clean up when I rebooted it. Should I really be rebuilding the database on a regular basis for maintenance? My vanilla launch PS4 seems to run pretty well. I guess maybe it could have lost a little speed when navigating the menus and such, but not much, and I just attribute that to the updates and just the overall gradual accumulation of data over the years with downloading more and more games onto it.

@JohnnyShoulder Yup I did it and I think the game reduced the loadings but it still stops to load when going fast (bikes, planes, cars).
I was going to change to my old HDD but I remembered you need to put on the firmware update again and I'm afraid to lose data! I'll try to get an external HDD like @andreoni79 suggested and I'll say if I noticed any difference