When the PS5 was first announced, there was some criticism of Sony’s decision to use non-proprietary expandable storage. This is because, rather than simply plug in an extra SSD, the manufacturer required you to open up your console, install heat sinks, and perform other “complicated” tasks more associated with building computers. The upshot, of course, was always that the prices of the drives would drop dramatically – and that’s finally happened.
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Right now, you can grab a 1TB Samsung SSD for under $100 – and it includes a heatsink pre-installed. Other options from Western Digital are available as well: you’re looking at about $150 for an enormous 2TB of storage space. All of these drives are up to the specification the PS5 requires, so you can play native new-gen games on them with lightning fast loading times and no compromise. In some cases, you’re saving more than $200 compared to the MSRP.
Obviously Sony learned a harsh lesson when it plumped up for proprietary storage on the PS Vita, with some memory sticks for the handheld costing more than the console itself. You can find out How to Install a Compatible M.2 NVMe SSD through the link if you’re worried about the process, and it’s honestly more straightforward than you may think. There’s never been a better time to expand your storage, and enjoy all of the convenience that comes with it.
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If it gets to a point when games are taking a long time to load, would this help? You know, In 5 years or something if games get much bigger.
If it’s just to put yet more games on the console I don’t see the need.
Caved and got a wd black 2tb 🤩
Fantastic value with these things now.
If you compare these prices to the propriety solution on offer for Xbox consoles you can clearly see the advantage of allowing 3rd party drives which will reduce in price far faster than any propriety solution that has no competition.
I only have one 1TB one on my main PS5, but even with a 4TB hard drive storing all my PS4 stuff, its still gets full regularly with both me and the misses using it.
I'm tempted to put a 2TB one in the main and shift the 1 TB to our back up machine.
If you have fantastic download speeds then I guess this wont matter, but for those of us who have to spend several hours downloading titles, being able to keep many more on the machine at any one time is a real boon.
Out of interest how do these work once installed. Do you have to tell the PS5 to install to the new SSD or does the PS5 just add the 2 tb onto the existing on board storage?
@Rob_230 you have to set whether to use the onboard storage or the m2 drive
Best time to buy a SSD fr! Been thinking of buying an SSD since i bought a PS5 but couldn't get over the prices. I used my 2TB HardDisk to store my PS4 games which did help a lot at that time but 600-700 GB for PS5 games is very low amount of storage. So definitely gonna order a SSD today. Never thought the prices would go lower. Felt like an eternity.
@Rob_230 you choose which is used for default installs. When you go to storage you can see both drives and their capacity. Updates for games go to where that game is installed. You can transfer from one to the other if you want to re-organise. The same as having 2 drives on a PC. Very intuitive.
@Wheatly
Ok. Zero point in expanding for me then. I only play 3-4 games at a time, absolute max.
@Rob_230 You choose which drive the PS5 games get installed to in settings. If you want it on the other drive, its a setting change. Not quite seamless, but in practice, once your console storage is full, you make the setting change and don't need to bother again..
I have a Samsung one I did last year. 2TB nice and easy to install.
@Titntin @GrimWillows @nitram2k11 Ah interesting. Thanks all! I'll definitely consider these. Seems like it would save alot of hassle. I'm forever deleting stuff
@Rob_230 yeah its a god send, and as you are not storing the operating system on it, you'd be surprised how many titles fit on a 1TB
@Rob_230 i was always dubious if id need one or if it was worth the faff installing it. Picked up a WD black 1tb one last year and, honestly, with me and my kids using the PS5 its been one of the best purchases ive made. It was ridiculously straightforward to put in and so easy to manage in the storage settings. Combined with a usb drive for ps4 games, i would highly recommend it.
@Rob_230 It's a game changer to be honest. It's pretty seamless and elegantly handled once you've got it installed.
I only have 1TB but it's made a massive difference. And the prices are really cheap now, as mentioned.
The prices are dropping so fast on these. Sony made a better decision when it comes to SSD expanded storage over Xbox.
I bought a 1TB WB Black SSD for $220 at the end of 2021 to a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro at the beginning of this year for $200.
Paying $360 for a 2TB Seagate SSD for my Series X seemed like such a rip off in comparison.
At this rate I'll be able to upgrade to a 4TB SSD for my PS5 by the end of this year or early next year. With over 80 physical PS5 games not including PS Plus Essential/Premium more storage is already needed.
I want to replace my £80 4TB drive that I have to drag around whenever I move the console (50% upstairs / 50% downstairs), but £459 is still a bit eye watering. I just can’t stand to uninstall a game (except Nioh, too bloody hard 😄)
Did anyone ever complain about non-proprietary storage expansion? Were they off their medication at the time? 🤨
@DTfeartheBEARD It's bonkers. At the console launch a 1TB NVME Gen 4 was around £250+ significantly more than the £220 Xbox 1TB equivalent.
Since then you have been able to find a 1TB drive for PS5 for as little as £65 whereas the Xbox one is still around £180. You can literally buy a 2TB for PS5 for less than 1TB on XSX.
All that means that my PS5 has been upgraded and my XSX hasn't. Proprietary was DEFINITELY the wrong way to go. The only advantage is they are hot swappable and portable, useful if you have a Series S and Series X in different rooms, or are flush enough to want more than one!
@get2sammyb @Weebleman Thank you - you may have me sold. I picked up Modern Warfare 2 in the Amazon Spring sale last week and felt the panic when i saw it was 130gb 😬 i already have Hogwarts, Resi 4, and Yakuza Ishin installed which takes up a fair chunk of space, so COD will push my PS5 to bursting - particularly if i also want to get Horizon Burning Sands next month, which will mean reinstalling Forbidden West!
@Wheatly It's bonkers, even more crazy they have been sold out on their own Microsoft/Xbox store for around 4+ months. I wanted to use a load of MS rewards points to soften the blow, but I can't.
Thinking I might go second hand at this point. I have some CEX vouchers and they are £150 right now. But Sods Law would be the reason they are sold out is because Microsoft are finally going to offer other, cheaper, options.
It's just unreasonable right now.
DrVenture69 wrote:
I USED to be the same, but have adapted my mentality this gen. We just don't need hundreds of games installed at once. I now just have to be more realistic about what I will ACTUALLY play.
Be honest most games have sat there untouched for years right?
It took a while to shift mindset but in many ways I prefer it now, I have less decision paralysis when I come to decide what to play next as i've already mostly made up my mind between a few titles.
@get2sammyb I honestly didn't expect a website which is not specialised in pc hardware to specify the price per GB. Well done.
@Rhaoulos That's an awesome feature, isn't it? Got to give @antdickens all the credit for that! (I love it, too!)
I bought two 4TB SN580x's, one for the PS5 to replace the 2TB I had originally, and one for my laptop. I'll stick the 2TB on a Pi4 (in a Sabrent enclosure) and use it to boot from.
I would love to upgrade but to be honest everything below 4tb seems very low and those ssd drives are still expensive. I use an external 4tb hdd to back up PS5 games and store PS4 ones but of course the stupid PS5 os doesn't update the games for some reason. I would love to buy the internal 4tb ssd and move the extrnal hdd permanently to my PS4 though.
Wow! Those prices are sweet! 4TB is the way I'm going to go. Crazy that you can get a 4TB expansion $100 cheaper than a Xbox 2TB expansion!
Yay for non-proprietary storage, 1TB of ps5 nvme 4 samsung ssd is only about $133 while I just sold my 2nd hand xbox proprietary nvme 3 ssd for about $227 (brand new is about $254) lol.
I may be wrong but I think the write speed of the external storage is a lot quicker than the internal one. Internal write speed is woeful compared to the read speed.
So updates and patching of games on the expansion might be quicker than on the internal drive.
I bought a 2TB ssd for £150 yesterday.
If your PS shared between family then you are better having a 2TB than 1TB.
I saw 4TB for £250 on another day. Just saying.
It's crazy that I have an external hdd 4tb for less than £80, and for that money you can get only 1tb ssd.
I literally just bought a WD 4TB 850x earlier in the week, and installed it yesterday. Now it's $100 cheaper -_-
@SJBUK sounds about right - the m.2 drives are for general use, while the onboard storage was optimised for gaming where read speeds are a lot more important than write speeds.
It's important to note that there has been a couple of years for fabrication of the faster chips to get cheaper, and the onboard storage had to be a fixed spec for the life of the console generation, and that while a higher spec might have been possible, it would have made the console more expensive.
I got the 1TB Western Digital Black a while back on sale. Funny thing is i only have two games on my PS5, so i far from need it, but i will in time and like having it there. Hope the Slim model uses it, so i can expand that console when I ditch this FAT and ugly for that matter model.
@theheadofabroom Indeed. And what many forget is the impressive decompression hardware behind it still makes it effectively faster than we have in most PCs.
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