It's official: The PS5 comes with approximately 667GB of usable storage space on its custom SSD, as noted in our massively in-depth PS5 Review. The SSD's total size is 825GB, but a sizable chunk of that is reserved for the console's operating system.
The bottom line is that this is a very limited amount of storage space. It's highly likely that those of you who play a lot of different games will be deleting, downloading, and reinstalling your favourite titles on a relatively frequent basis so that you don't run out of room.
To make matters worse, you will not be able to add a second SSD to your PS5 at launch. This functionality will be added later down the line.
However, you will be able to hook up an external hard drive to your PS5 right away. You won't be able to store PS5 games on an external hard drive, but you can use it to store PS4 titles for use via backwards compatibility. PS4 games stored on a hard drive won't fully benefit from the PS5's SSD, but they will still run better than ever thanks to the PS5's improved hardware and Game Boost.
Is 667GB enough space for you? Did you expect more? Let us know which games will be living on your SSD in the comments section below.
[source pushsquare.com]
Comments 58
I think storage is going to be a problem across the board this gen. I typically delete games as I play new ones. I rarely return to stuff anymore, particularly big AAA games. I usually have a few big games and smaller/indie games installed at a time. With as huge as some of the games are getting though, that will go fast.
protracted sigh
Library management is gonna be a spectacular pain in the various regions.
Hooray for expensive SSD I guess?
Thank God it’s not 666GB free eh
With at least 3 tb of digital PS4 games i think i will wait for PS5 to allow SSD Extensions.........not gonna hold my breath did it take 5yrs for PS4 to allow extensions?
I know you are saying the backwards compat games wont benefit from the SSD if stored on the external drive but do they benefit anyway? Your previous article doesnt seem to suggest it does.
Well, that’s more than I ever had before so fine for me. Households with 4 of 5 people will have issues and will have to spring for more storage in the years to come though.
You can also delete Astro Bot once finished for an extra 10Gb apparently.
Why cant I store PS5 games on External Hard Drive?
Doesn’t really bother me. Once I’m done with a game I usually uninstall it and play the next one.
Why is NFS 2015 included in "May Exhibit Errors on PS5" list? It's my favourite NFS since Hot Pursuit and I will be very sad if it won't work on PS5( Was hoping for 60 fps but now... just make it work, please🖤
I get that you can't run PS5 games from an external hard drive but why can't they be stored there when not being played? That's going to cause more of a problem than the limited initial storage number
@Kaisgrady
If you watch the digital foundry video you’ll see they say they’ve played several games with this warning but noticed no issues at all (what’s more, games are locked at 60fps as long as they have an uncapped frame rate)
Oh no.... I guess I'll wait for the pro or slim edition in a few years.
Or until the exclusives are too good to resist.
Is it right you can’t store PS5 games on an external drive? On Xbox you can store games on there but not ply them. It makes a good solution to move stuff on there when you’re done, and move it back if you want to play. Beats redownloading. Even as time goes on and we see 2TB machines, it’s still nowhere near enough. Not sure we’ll see 6TB+ SSDs built in this gen.
@Snick27
You can. You just can't run them from an external hard drive.
So it seems my concerns about the use of a fancy new SSD are proving to be correct. Anyone with a large collection is going to be consistently juggling installs or forced to buy expensive (at least initially) expansion modules.
Even if you can only play PS5 games from internal storage, I don't see why you can't at least shunt them to an external HDD for storage when space requires, rather than having to delete and re-install, or worse (for some) re-download them.
How long does a disc-based game take to install?
Does the space of the installed OS include a reserve for gameplay recording, or does that take up further space?
@GADG3Tx87 The article seems to be very clear that you can't store PS5 games on an external drive.
@GADG3Tx87 But this article says otherwise. Maybe they meant played from external.
@Paranoimia @Snick27
There are several articles out there that contradict that statement and even Sony themselves supposedly according to some confirmed this months ago.
Edit.
I just double checked and according to more recent articles yes, you can store PS5 games on an external HDD but the feature is disabled at launch.
@GADG3Tx87 Well, I hope you're right. Seems a ridiculous limitation if this article is correct. If you can't do it at launch, hopefully it'll be enabled in the future.
@GADG3Tx87 more an more i feel PS5 isn't ready for prime time.
No complaints here, plenty for me! In a year or twos time when there's more games out that I'd perhaps want installed permanently than there's space to upgrade.
@Paranoimia @Snick27
Agreed. The PS5 having disabled features feels like a beta product and by rights shouldn't be acceptable.
I have an 8TB external HDD connected to my PS4 with over 4TB of games installed to carry over. However when they are available I will be buying a bigger Gen4 NVME for the PS5 games, hopefully it won't be long before a third party can offer a 4TB which is the capacity I personally am aiming for.
XboxSX loading last gen games faster than PS5.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/xbox-series-x-is-loading-legacy-games-faster-than-ps5-early-tests-suggest/
667GB of storage space is absolutely fine for me. I never sought to upgrade the internal 500GB HDD that came with my PS4, and now I've got a 1TB USB portable HDD attached to it that I keep most of my games on. Since I will likely be playing mostly PS4 games on the PS5 for the first year at least, I will be able to manage the PS5's lack of space. I won't be buying at launch, so who knows by the time I'm ready to get a PS5 there may be a model with a higher capacity SSD.
Broken record here but games are only going to get bigger as we move forward so this amount of storage is almost objectively not enough, especially when you consider most people are going to have other media/apps stored on the console. Yes, you can get a standard external HD but bringing this up only proves the current drive is not enough.
All that said, this is what we're getting. No use complaining really. First world problems right?
Hopefully this leads to less backlog since people will want to finish their games first before removing them to clear up space... assuming people are not spending all their time replaying PS4 games or working on their PS4 backlog.
I guess we'll see how much of an issue loading games is on the PS5. Madden and The Show can take hours on my PS4, so once I take them off to free space, I usually don't reinstall them even if I want to play them again. Other games vary.
I guess they need to come back to cartridges (SD cards or something) for games now since storage it’s becoming a real pain
@thefourfoldroot oh ok. Thx man.
I’m really disappointed by this. 1tb should have been the atleast minimum. With 667gb your looking at 4/5 ps5 games max & then you have to consider game patches aswell. I’ve got a 2tb external hard drive. Going to use that for ps now & whenever 2tb ssd external or internal ssd drop in price I’ll get one then.
@Spoonman-2 I recall the Pentium 667 was actually 666 but Intel didn't want to call it that b/c Satan so maybe Sony made sure it wasn't 666GB free. 😂
I searched google for a good story but nothing, 1999 must predate google's omniscience. 😉
"However, you will be able to hook up an external hard drive to your PS5 right away. You won't be able to store PS5 games on an external hard drive,"
Sony knows generations - new gen internal, last gen external. 😂
@rjejr
How much space do you think GT7 will take?
Oh, hang on... thats 2022 😄
@Spoonman-2 😂😂👍 funny my man
I'm hoping 667 GB is enough for me. Despite knowing that Black Ops Cold War will take 133 of that space.
So transfering PS4 data to your ps5 will be virtually impossible due to storage size restrictions
There really is not point to PS4 BC at all from this point, my games are all stored on internal storage on my pro (2tb)
The only option to counteract this is to transfer all your games to a external storage and play them from there instead but it's questionable if you still get the performance benefits when playing from external, 2 articles are contradicting themselves with different responses regarding that matter.🤔🤔
@zupertramp Maybe in the longer term, but Devs have said that because of the SSD games will actually be smaller as they don't have to duplicate things.
I'm surprised Pushsquare haven't mentioned this in the article as they have reported on it previously.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/03/ps5_ssd_could_reduce_game_sizes_and_save_storage_space
667GB is fine for me as i rarely have more than a few games on the go at once.
@TheMysticOne This is one of those things I'll believe when I see. Some of the hope, I think, was that the new specs would allow for more complex level design which might still end up benefiting from the duplication of assets. Pair that with richer graphics and sound and I just don't see the games being smaller. But I've been known to be wrong on many occasions.
And you're right this may not be an issue for a couple years.
So January will have Hitman 3 taking up a big chunk of the drive as an ongoing service game, so I'm hopeful the store will start listing game sizes for PS5 titles soon. I will have an external SSD for PS4 titles and was also hopeful I could transfer PS5 titles to this as well, but there seem to be confusing points on different websites about this.
@zupertramp
Don’t know if I agree with that. A game will be around 40gb average (some AAA games over 100gb due to 4K textures, indies and most Japanese games likely smaller than last gen). So, that’s like 15 games. Even if you only play huge AAA then it’ll still be around 6 games played simultaneously. Who does that?
The only time I see it being an issue is if you have a family of 5+ or dorm room sharing a console. But I wouldn’t want Sony to have put a larger SSD in than most need for that scenario (or worse, drop the specs to still hit a price point) big groups can split the cost of an extra SSD.
@Mpquikster I absolutely would have! I'm probably going to end up spending that much anyways, once the expansion drives are on the market.
@Spoonman-2
1up for Sony? 🤣🤣
I feel it's insane Sony seems to get away with this laughable amount of usable free storage, and not have a way of increasing it at a reasonable price at launch.
The potential is there, but you know... Sony is at it again. 🤷♂️
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've been living with a maxed out PS4 hard drive for years. I'm constantly at the edge, and regularly have to delete things even to do game updates. Its so frustrating. Before they announced how small the HD would be on the PS5, I would have never imagined that this would be such a problem.
Its extra frustrating, because my kids will want to play about ten different games over the course of a month, so in addition to my own games that take up 40-100 gigs each, I'm constantly loading and deleting theirs, which average 15-30g too.
Plus the save data by itself takes up about 10g as well.
A couple of years ago people laughed when it was said the PS5 would have SSD, let alone more than 500GB. Could be worse, the Series S only has 360 odd available space!
Wouldn't be as bad if we could move PS5 data out to external drive, hopefully that'll come back.
@thefourfoldroot Yes we've been down this road, you and I. But consider, there is the family aspect but also the possibility of those who use their expensive console as a media center of sorts. With Sony pushing all things digital (games, movies, tv shows) I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of console owners have a mix of all three. Then add in capture data, apps like Spotify, Disney+, etc. and things start to add up.
We can agree to disagree on this but I don't know if I can get behind your blasphemous suggestion of deleting Astro Bots. That's just a bridge too far. 😝
@Unlucky13 Preach! No but seriously, I'm with you.
This is the thing im probably most dissapointed about with the PS5, they absolutely should not be advertising this as coming with 1TB SSD, technically it is, but as we're seeing, the amount of usable storage is a lot less!
The games I play regularily (D2, ,No Mans Sky, Generation Zero and MK 11) already take me up to about 160ish GB and im planning on getting Planet Coaster and AC Valhalla and then im up to about 240gb in the first week of the PS5.
Im already saving for an expandable SSD for whenever they officially become available.
@zupertramp
Lol, on that last point we can agree. I really wish they’d made it VR compatible too but no native Ps5 games support PSVR apparently 😕 (or to put more hopefully, PS5 VR games will need an upcoming new VR headset).
Apps use nothing though. Spotify is 90.70 MB,, Netflix and Prime my biggest, both at 1.16Gb, so that’s not an issue.
considering by each generation, games got bigger, bigger and more bigger, i don't think 667 GB on PS5 SSD Storage will be enough during the entire PS5 lifecycle, people might need to buy a aditional SSD to be able to store they games, imagine this you buy God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbiden West and Reident Evil 8 Village, and only by buying this 3 games, half of your PS5 SSD Storage is ocupied.
@thefourfoldroot I all but demand Astro Bots gets VR support and becomes the official PS mascot.
And granted apps take up very little...I just mean when you add in everything else they still kinda matter. And I would suspect we might get revamped apps to go with the revamped UI that might make them take up sightly more but this is also just a guess.
825 gb ssd is such an odd number to start at. Since usually it goes 500gb, 1TB, then 2TB.
Xbox ssd is a bit slower but that 1TB makes up for it and also they have $220 1TB nv.me expandable memory at launch meanwhile sony doesnt have anything to expand it.
@Sebatrox PS5 Pro!
@BansheeNorn @BansheeNorn
According to some and whom posted this the XBOX SSD is faster.
"Microsoft's direct storage API is insanely fast and Sony can't use it. Microsoft also has a fast decompression method and better compression by roughly 2x.
Lastly because of the custom ssd controller Sony can't take advantage of the AMD boost in data transfer. Sony has to transfer data in 256Mb chunks while Microsoft can transfer data in any chunk size they need. So if they need 8 gigs of data it's transferred in a single 8 gig chunk but on the ps5 to get the same 8 gigs of data it would need to be broken into small chunks.
This transfer process is still fast as hell on ps5 but due to chunk size it's roughly 10% faster on the xbox. Combine that with direct storage API and 2x better compression and faster decompression"
@Snick27
Thats nice to hear cause the ponies have been telling me its 50% slower. Guess your version makes more sense.
If you uninstall Astro, how much available space will there be on the SSD?
@Medic_Alert pushing the tech that still has xbox out there beating them in loading the same games on both platforms. Lol
@GADG3Tx87 incorrect may want to re-read the article.
@Spoonman-2 GT7 will be cloud streamed only b/c the PS5 won't be able to run it natively. 🤣
No wait, that's the Switch, sorry. 😉
I just calculated today that on ps4 pro that I have 1.38tb of applications on my hard drive, now the prospect of transferring all that data to ps5 is nigh impossible, my ps5 would only be used for ps5 games and nothing else, the storage space is absolutely appalling for this digital age of gaming smfdh!
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