PS4 External Storage Loading Time Tests - Upgrade Options Compared!
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- It works brilliantly, but what are the best ways to use PS4's extended storage feature? Tom runs through the merits of buying a sizeable 4TB external drive versus a smaller SSD (inserted into a USB enclosure). The results are surprisingly promising all round.
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USB is the greatest invention since the computer mouse.
Silikone You are probably right about that. *Immigrants: We Get The Job Done*
Silikone the greatest invention since the OPTICAL MOUSE. Not the weird trackball mice.
ChingBlingtheKing didn't USB come before optical mouse though? Don't optical mice all us USB only?
Damn, and I thought FireWire would be the next big thing.
+MrDeits97 Mouse had it's own input in the 90s, I don't think usb was a thing yet, at least not universally utilized.
That was a concise, to the point video. No fluff. No crappy attempt at unnecessary satire. Just pure, useful information. A+ mate, you earned my sub.
I was just searching for info on this an hour ago and you finally do the video! Thanks Tom.
Best value is probably still an internal 7200rpm drive.
The problem with that is it's a pain to have to open up your console, unscrew the drive, remove it, replace it with the new one, close everything up again, and then having to format the drive and re-download everything you had on the old one again. External drives just make things so much easier.
Makes me sick that people give a dislike... Digital Foundry is amazing, and you are the very best out there!!! Keep going... ;)
It's an informative video to be sure. Though I would have liked for them to have compared a few external Hard Drives against each other. I'd like to know how the different external drives compare, and what the best options are for when looking for an external drive.
Do all games work on external drives? I know Xbox one had big performance issues on an external drive.
It should work with every game, as applications are sandboxes. Performance depends on game code how and when game reads files.
Yes for PS4 games they can all run from the ext drive .. xbox I'm guessing must load data in the background , so it needs to be able to get that data quickly, I know the X and S games need to be on the internal SSD or the SSD expansion to run, although older gen games can run on these newer consoles from an external drive, even if the ext drive is a standard HDD .. hope that helps
I have a PS4 PRO and i am glad i switched from the original PS4. The
upgrade for the difference in price between the original PS4 and PS4 PRO
is an absolute steal. Having SATA III in the PS4 PRO and a Solid State
Drive installed in it, makes the PS4 PRO a super fast, powerhouse of a
console. I should know, as i have a 1TB SSD in mine and the loading
times in games are near non-existent. Mass Effect Andromeda loads in 10
seconds when going to a planet. Installed games load even faster! Get a
PS4 PRO, get a solid state drive, put that inside the PS4 PRO, use the
1TB hard drive that was originally inside the PS4 PRO as an external
hard drive and thank me later.
but at what cost?
Well a 480GB SSD isn't that expensive now.
you forgot you bought a PS4 then a PS4 Pro, online subs the entire generation and then a 480gb SSD just so you can play games without having to delete and re-install every time you want to play something different.
Thats about £1000.
But you dont have a 480gb SSD do you, you said a 1TB, so you downplayed it a touch ;) Then i asked at what cost.
So make that £1000+
All of that to play SJW infested, feminist disgusting induce vomiting looking Mass Effect Andromeda? You are doing it wrong son.
1000 Dollars Could Of Got you an Oldler PC With a i7 4th generation and a Gtx 1080Ti
#DON T WASTE YOURMONEY ON SOMETHING That Isnt Worth it
I lived in the tape cassette era...
don't moan about load times until you've tried Commodore 64 game loading times. 👊
Yep, we learned patience. Synapse's Encounter I had on cassette.
Morrowind on the original Xbox took around 5 mins (from what I remember) to load the game.
I had a C64 too but can't remember if it took a bit to load the floppys. Those gold box AD&D games were the best.
Amstrad 464 nearly as bad
I had an amstrad cpc lol
Edds Box One Haha I cut my teeth on space invaders!
7:10 my concerns exactly. Really appreciate you doing the research and breaking it down so as to settle any doubts I had
Awesome Video. I've been looking for this for a couple days. Specifically, the internal vs external comparison with the same drive. Thank You!
just a word of warning; if you're going to use an external drive you should definitely remember to go to [devices/stop using external storage] before you turn off your console, otherwise you may find yourself getting hit with a drive corruption when you next turn on your console. it allows you to repair the drive, which is usually fine, but not always. it happened to me a week or so ago and I had to reformat the drive from scratch to get it working again. bit of a pain in the arse if you're on a slow connection.
anyway, with some luck they'll automate the safe disconnection of the external hard drive in a future update, but for now, be aware.
Thanks!
Kim Sanderhoff I'm not entirely sure and I'm hesitant to test it personally (my 1tb HDD is almost full and I'm in no hurry to redownload it all again on my cans-and-string internet connection).
That said, yesterday I did turn off my console after forgetting to stop the HDD, but I had already quit out of the application. when I turned the console back on it didn't tell me to repair the drive, so... either is already been addressed in a patch that I didn't notice installing, or it's safe to turn off the console if you're not physically accessing anything on the external drive when you do...
either way, I'm wary of leaving my console in suspend mode if I'm away for more than a few hours lest a power outage occur and corrupt my data, until some clarity on the issue arises anyway.
Orias rest mode is fine, assuming there's no power outage, turning the power off all together, not so much.
another factor that might be relevant is that I've enabled peripheral charging when in rest mode, so the HDD retains it's power. I am not entirely sure if external drives retain their power without it turned on.
further testing required.
Taran Charlton-Blore my External shuts off when I put my PS4 into rest mode unless something is downloading but my External is one that plugs into an outlet
Is this still a problem or did they fix it with an update? Just bought one.
Hey DigitalFoundry, it'll be great to include a SSHD in comparison, by having it in the system and also in an USB enclosure. Since SSHD is a great option of having capacity:price:speed balance, I believe a lot of PS4 owners will love to see how it stacks up with other disk drives. Thanks!
@Digital Foundry, now that it is nearly June of 2019, and the PS4 has been updated to OFW 6.50+, could you re-run some tests using some of the faster SSD's of today? I saw a video from someone else that was testing the loading speeds from older models of PS4 firmware's vs today's newer firmwares, and the firmware's alone were loading and booting the console up faster. I would like to see what the difference is for today's best SSD's and the newest firmwares combined, please. If there is a decent difference, I would finally like to upgrade.
Also, is there any difference from loading games on the PS4 Pro with the newest firmware using USB 3.0 HDD's and SSD's? Would be nice to see a re-test, all things considered. Technology moves at a steady pace, and this video of yours is a few years old now.
I just bought a 4TB Western Digital external drive last weekend. With the 2TB in my PS4 I have 6TBs, It awesome to not have to worry at all about space.
You answered literally every question I had about running PS4 games from an external hard drive - thanks!
There is also SSHD's from seagate available. They come in sizes from 500gb to 2TB. They have an SSD cache built in that will give you near SSD speeds after the first few loads in any game. They don't cost much more then a regular HDD either.
Downside to these drives is if you switch back and forth between a bunch of games you won't see much of an advantage. If your the type who starts a game and keeps playing until the end then it's an easy choice. Honestly unless you need more then 2TB there really isn't much reason not to use an SSHD over a traditional drive for an extra 10 or 20 bucks.
Walmart pnySSD 500gb 60 bucks
@@bigbank7350 please get a good quality SSD at least $150 it is the sweet side
And then theirs me running a 120GB SSD in my 2006 PS3.
I know I'm late but this doesn't matter as the PS3 doesn't copy the whole game from the BluRay disc to the PS3; the PS4 does do this...
@@Scoopyyy I think he mean internal storage
Does it improve load time? I have a 320 gig sata installed in my phat
@@marcusinfinity9386 Yes, it loads COD games way quicker, and loads BF4 faster than on my PC weirdly enough.
@@Jamasen you play bf4 on your ps3? 😐
!!!Reminder: formatting a storage device removes all data from it!!!
So make sure no important data is on it.
I'm sure some console users are not aware of that, and will skip the warning without giving it a second thought.
These informative videos are unmatched.
500GB SSD as my internal. 2TB hdd via usb :)
VirulentPip Me too! Couldn't be happier.
Punch Down King at over £500 for a 2TB SSD.. That's insane lol
I have a 250 gb ssd just laying around, if I install it internally and use a 1 tb hdd externally, will ii get faster load times? You guys seem to know something.
Sugar Hieroglyph
of course u will lol ssd makes everything faster
Sugar Hieroglyph All you need to do is actually watch the video lol
Well by the looks of it the 4tb external drive seems to be a 7200rpm drive while the stock 500g in the PS4 would be 5400rpm.
HDDs usually drop in rotation speed when exceeding 3TB. I'm pretty sure that the 4TB model here is 5400RPM.
There are plenty of 7200rpm disk over 3TBs. Given the speed difference in the load times, I would be suprised if it wasn't 7200rpm.
I agree; I'm guessing it was 7200rpm too. Based on the thickness of the drive when they show it, it definitely looks like a full sized desktop drive in a USB enclosure.
Tom's comment half way through the video that external is always faster than internal neglects to point out that he's specifically referring to the drives they tested here. It likely won't be faster if you're using a cheap USB drive that is also 5400rpm like the stock drive. But it's really good to know that there isn't a significant performance hit if you do decide to use an external drive.
Actually, its just that the stock PS4/PS4 Pro Drives are only SATA II.
I looked up the External Seagate Drives and, stating to the amazon side, it has 5400 rpm.
I can't believe that SSD + External enclosure idea didn't click didn't even cross my mind til you showed it on the video. Just for that thanks a million.
Didn't even notice you had a cold Tom! Hope you get over it fully soon :)
I currently use a 500gb SSD for my PS4. Don't have spare cash for an external again currently but I have had in the past for my PS4 and it's a great investment :)
amazing video, got even more than I was looking for. Thanks!
The PS4 Pro supports SATAIII compared with the stock PS4 which only supports SATAII, so it would be great if you could do some load time tests with the SSD installed internally in the PS4 Pro and compare that with the SSD running externally via USB.
Finally! I have been waiting for this video from DF for a long time.
Finally found a cheap enough upgrade to do a proper PS4 Pro upgrade to 2TB Samsung 870 for $50. I was going to put it in a enclosure but between the 2 enclosures I was getting around 100mb lower read/write when benchmarking them in a PC. Decided just to go through the entire process to replace the small Samsung 850 250gb internal drive I had in there. Once the 2TB was installed I just moved the games off my 1tb external SSD. Now I have more room then I will ever need as I mostly game on PC. Only care about exclusives and VR games.
So, obvious top option for any PS4 atm is internal SSD + huge external HDD for storage.
And if I recall correctly you can transfer between the two and put the current game your playing on the ssd, then move it over to the external after you are done.
Yes, thought the process isn't very fast and "on the fly" especially for those huge 50-60gb games. For dome reason ps4 re-encrypts game data when moving between storages.
Yeah, it's still a definite step up from re-downloading games, as far as my internet connection goes.
Oforfs Or buy a PC for that money lol
Yea, except, some may have a gaming PC already. And somehow It doesn't make em poke a silly self-affirming agenda onto others faces. And it does not even prevent those people from enjoying games on other platforms.
Thank you for your time making this great Video! Now 2021 with new updates on 1GEN PS4.. the FASTEST way to LOAD a game is still the INTERNAL SSD yes ???
Still a useful and great video in 2019, thank you!
You missed testing a 7200 RPM with an external USB drive and also internally to see if the internal SATA 2 and external USB 3.0 connections makes a huge difference...
Ps4 pro has sata 3, which is bad ass. the usb 3 is quicker than the SATA 2 in the og ps4.
It isn't much better than the internal 5400RPM IME.
Didn't realise it would wipe the Hard drive and make it unusable with anything else when you use it with PS4. All my porn... gone.
Starkiller100 ...you should have known this
There was no warning! Luckily there wasn't anything important on there
There was a warning and it specifically told you it would format the drive for use with the PS4 before you do it. You can even see the moment it tells you it'll wipe all data on the drive in this video.
Why the fuck do you have porn on your PS4
ChingBlingtheKing so he can watch porn in 1080p 60fps duh
Indeed one of the best features released! can't complain about loading times it's pretty much the same as the internal one
Wow DF! Finally. I've been holding back getting an ExtHDD until you guys review it.
Just bought a 4 TB for $95 and am glad to know my games won't be slower but actually a little faster! Really glad I bought it and good job on the video as always DF!
Be aware of future updates still being on console storage. NOT the EXTERNAL, this can explain why the "Other" folder on the console is large.
1. Install game to HDD, updates included.
2. Move game to external SSD.
3. Game has new update and DLC. This stays on the HDD in the "other" folder.
4. Move game back across to console HDD to get rid of the "Other" folder and merge contents.
5. Move completely updated game with DLC back to External SSD.
Why cant updates and DLC automatically be moved across to external storage Sony?
It's ridiculously easy to change the internal drive. No "tampering" needed.
Was able to try the internal and external ssd so glad u made this vid
Very informative i just converted my pc 3.5 inch hard disk into external drive for my ps4.
This video was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
what about loading speeds from the SSD in the ps4 pro? i have a ps4 pro and was wondering if i should get an ssd as my internal drive or just keep my 2tb drive in it with my 5tb drive as an external drive
while external drive support is great and all (and long overdue) I'd really like the ability for the PS4 to interact better with home networks. ie. would be nice to be able to transfer screencaps and dvr videos and game saves directly to my NAS or have these folders made available as network mount points.
My Seagate 5TB turned out to be a life-changing upgrade. I knew it wasn't any slower - didn't realize it's actually faster, holy hell
Just the review I was looking for. Thanks a lot.
Tom's voice is really nice to listen to!
Off topic, but if I had a British accent, I would call random places pretending to be Bond, James Bond! How awesome is that accent. I have always been jealous! Cheers!!
Thanks for this helpful video man!! You cut my research time down to nothing!! 🙏🏽👍🏽
My PS4 pro still has like 600GB left, so I'm good. I love my pro!
squalltheonly Do you have 2 games? Lol
exactly what i was looking for, thank you!
I own a PS4 with a 4TB SeaGate External HardDrive, and it’s awesome. Loading times seem slightly faster. I have about 50 PS4 games, in total about 2.5 TB of used data. For most people a 2 TB external hard drive would be good enough plus you can still use you’re consoles storage whether that’s 500GB or 1TB.
Thank you very much for this video! I've been using that same 4TB drive with my PS4 for over a month now, so this information was very useful to me.
Also, I hope you feel better soon, Sir!
Thanks for this. I was really considering an SSD 1 TB for PS4
Personally, Im rocking a internal ssd for games that suffer from slow loading textures, and a 4 tb external for the rest!
General Zubbis so a 250 gb ssd ?
@@BearYuri no i have 1tb ssd internal, but 250 Works too
General Zubbis what is it called?
@@mohamedmahadi3607 1TB Samsung EVO SSD and Seagate 4tb external hdd
i got the same seagate 2TB version exellent choice people 👌
This is comparison I was looking for, thanks!
Internal SSD is the best upgrade that you can do to your PS4 and PS4 Pro. The speed improvement and usability is massive!
Honestly it's be best to use both together. Using an ssd internally to install multiplayer titles and a hefty external for single player games. That should give you the best of both worlds.
Exactly
My guess is the OG PS4's SATA II interface is the main bottleneck on HDDs whereas it's less on Pro, but probably still a bit of a bottleneck there. SSDs are still the route to go for your more frequently used games it seems (or buy a 2 TB FireCuda drive and cache the games you'll most frequently play onto the SSD portion through frequent bootups and whatnot.
The main thing with this is that you can now use several drives if you include the internal drive, and even use the classic SSD+HDD combination.
Great Video Tom, what about an M.2 and there are some devices that do raid0, which allows to use both SSD and HDD.
You should now do the XBOXONE version test just like this, and also include an M.2 and a raid0 enclosure.
I would love you guys to make a behind the scenes video of your testing. I imagin it is a long process of swapping out hardware and getting everything configured just right.
So, the best deal we can get is a small internal SSD with a huge external Hard Drive and we get SSD like load times in games on the external Hard Drive, am I correct?
-
-planning to get an internal 500GB SSD with an external 1TB Hard Drive.
The stock internal 500GB is 5200 rpm, of cos it will be slower than the 7200 rpm HDDs. You should take the 4TB out of its casing and swap it into the PS4 internally. Let us know the difference between using the same HDD externally vs internally. This will answer the big question of whether the USB external approach comes with performance penalty.
So is that seagate drive 7200rpm?
Your review was great!! I've been trying to figure out should I go for speed or size. Thanks
Nice vid! I was hoping you did something like this! On another topic, I started to wonder - is there any way to throttle a console performance? Those are extremely closed boxed, it'd be fun (at least for me lol) to see if you could actually make games work worse under certain conditions!
my boy Tom, 500gb SSD internal with a 4TB external seem like GGs
great video with just the information I wanted to know. Thanks!
clear and concise as ever. good work
I recently bought the 4TB Seagate ext HD myself, and i can only recommend it! Its amazing, fast and easy to use (drag and drop)
great comparison video. You should have put the links to where to buy the external drive.
Top job in explaining stuff man! Liked and subbed;)
should of been available day 1 but at least its here now
Stopped by in preparation for PS5. Thanks guys!
Covered everything I needed. Nice one.
Yeah I went with a 3TB 3.0 drive and I'm loving it. I can download all my games and just not worry about it anymore.
You can use the fastest SSD but the read/write speed will be capped by the bus speed. USB 3.0 top speed is aroung 5Gb/s (a MOBO can till qualify as USB 3.0-compatible with just half of that), while SATA6 (internal bus of the PS4) is 6Gb/s. It is of course better to use the internal bus of the PS4 (eg. replace the internal HDD with a faster one than to use an external HDD).
Very nice - I have a 120 gb SSD lying around, and unfortunately I can't format it since the PS4 wants something 250 GB or larger ... Does anyone know exactly what filesystem sony uses on these ? (I just need to fit gta v on there that's all)
Considering PS4 doesn't support 3.5" HDDs, I think it's nice that they finally brought external HDD compatibility for the PS4. I mean ultimate HDD companies can make a 2.5" HDD in 9.5mm max height at 2 TB or bigger at a relatively affordable price, this is a good choice.
I think when I get a PS4 Pro later, I'll get an 8 TB Western Digital external drive and keep only game app data externally.
Also, does it matter if you use a "travel" size external HDD or a standard "desktop" size external HDD in terms of speed?
Great informative video. Thank you. Now I know what I want.
i heard the switch can read 2tb sd cards thats incredible imo for a hybrid because you don't need to carry a big portable hard-drive everywhere
great vid, I had been wondering about this!
I have a PS4 Pro Pro Pro!
1 1/2 years ago, I upgraded the internal to an 8 Tb SSD.
I gotten a 2nd 8 Tb SSD recently to use as a external drive (to many PS + games).
I have a 8 Tb external HDD for making backups.
I don't know if I have a bad internal SSD or not.
Every time I lose power, I have to reinstall the PS4 firmware, format the SSD, and restore the backup.
I ended up getting a UPS because of that.
It takes 34+ hours to backup that data and another 34+ hours to restore the backup.
Great work as usual!
Hey DF! Can y'all do a test on how well the new FFXV update holds up with the new "stable mode"?
For Pete's sake, it's not a new feature. They reintroduced 30 fps Lite mode with even frametimes, which was taken away on the original Pro patch. So, you just go watch the original DF analysis on FF15 and boom, there's your new test.
Brilliant video mate! You're freakin awesome. Thank you
Loading speeds are fine and all, but I'm using Seagate 4TB(the same as in the video) and I noticed issues during gameplay. Same for my friend, who also uses this drive. It affects different games in different ways. For example when using Horizon: Zero Dawn from external the dialogues would often load delayed, and then would be cut off by next dialogue, or even worse, next line would start playing while old one was still spoken.
On internal HDD the issue didn't happen.
I have noticed similar "small but noticeable" issues in most games I played on external HDD. The biggest issues I found in Atelier Shallie, which became close to unplayable when the inventory got bigger. Any attempt to access the inventory would make the game slow to few frames per second, and the game would downsample it's graphics. When I moved the game to internal the issue stopped, getting it back on external made the issue return.
I needed this video thank you so much!
I know this video is about 5 years old but I only buy ssd's. The reason is simple, HDD's die quickly, some of them last only few years and you throw your money and data out of the window. I Have a 9 years old SSD which is not even the highest quailty in a daily use and it's still in excellent condition. It won't last forever but an average HDD dies in 9 years time.
Digtalfoundry, you should have also tested Seagate desktop SSHD hybrid drives with 4TB HDD and 8GB nand (SSD) memory that's used as cache. In previous test even on PS3 the laptop models showed a big speed increase, and on PS4 (standard and pro) it showed close to SSD performance. Put the 4GB model in a USB-bracket and you have both space and speed.
I've used one in my PS4 and it's a good speed increase especially if you play the same game for a while, things get cached and loading times decrease quite a lot.
I’d be interested to see if there are any benefits to using a hybrid SSD/platter drive, internally and externally. Not sure about the benefits because the file system may not support it. They’re still relatively expensive but can be a compromise between speed and storage size. Definitely a niche product, but it would be nice to see the tests anyways.
Maybe do a comparison of portable external vs desktop external too? Theoretically the desktop should be faster than the portable, while an SSD would still come out on top.
Would be great if games could also be copied (not only moved) and the process could run in the background, while playing another game. Otherwise great feature - really like the PS4 setup now, SSD internal (OS and Games boot fast) and regular (stock) HDD via USB (as a backup for big games that you want to keep for later)
All consoles should have a option for external HD from the start.
Larger HDDs = larger platters = faster loadtimes. Thats why the external 4 TB is faster then the internal 500GB drive. SSHDs are a good alternative. My testing show on a PS4/PS4 pro basetime 1 min on internal drive. 45 sec on SSHD (50% improvement in speed) and 30 sec on the fastest SATA3 SSD available.
That are the baselines. 2TB SSHD drives cost about 100 dollars and is therefore the best price/performance.
Best is of course an internal SSD and use a large HDD external and load in the active games onto the SSD. SSDs also improve textures loading and so on since games use streaming from the media. This was even more notable an Xbox360/PS3 where the internal 480meg forced developers to fanatical stream from media = popin and texture loading in game.
Why are people complaining about ps4's late external HDD support while you can upgrade your internal HDD without needing to buy a proprietary one?
My biggest issue is they should have placed a usb3 port at the back of the console for this idea it would have made it better when having it under your TV
Very informative, thank you!
I use an M/2 Sata Enclosure with a Samsung 960 Pro SSD with my Xbox One S and it makes a real difference to load times and a perfect solution to copy games to other Xbox's with family sharing rather than re-downloading! Can we have some coverage for Xbox as well, please?
Wish the PS4/X1 had a memory expansion slot like the N64 did.
Hi! Great video! Have a question, bought a 2TB Seagate Slim External HDD for my son's PS4, right after 2 months the disk started to give problems to him, then I took it to the store, the guy at the store told me that we should be using this kind of hdd's for PS4 as they can get damage due to the read and write process. But I really doubt it, they will refund me the money but was this guy right? My son was using it to save the downloaded games to it. Can I get an external 2TB regular HDD from another brand? or get a 480Gb SSD?. Cheers!