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.
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.
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.
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+
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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...
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 ???
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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2:14 HOW is it a big surprise that the 4TB External loaded FASTER than the internal stock drive? The original PS4 has a SATA 2 connection which has a bandwidth of 3Gb/sec whereas USB 3.0 caps out at 5Gb/sec so OBVIOUSLY the external hard drive will be faster.
is not about sata2 if is slow on ps4 , , in internal stock drive 2.5 from sony ps4 , don't go fast than 100 mb/s is not even the sata1 limit who is 150 mb/s !! sata3 will change nothing if ur drive is limited at 100 mb/s speed ,,, it's will go 100mb/s even u plug it in sata 3 , 4 , 5 ( when they will exist oneday ) it's just that that the hdd in external is more fast than 100 mb/s ,, maybe 150- 170 mb /s of speed !! that just that ,,, any mechanical hard drive in 2.5 can reach at speed max of usb3 ,,, exept if they ssd about 500 mb/s , is not a problem of sata , but a problem of max speed plate
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)
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.
Just tested boot time on prey demo. my internal 500gb drive load time was 1:13 and my external western digital elements 1tb load time was 1:12..... did I buy a slow external drive?
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?
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.
kraajkase so I bought a ps4 pro tried to use that port for sound and it was bad. I returned and got a new one, same problem, now my headset works flawlessly using the ports on the front.
Got my self a 5tb external HD. it took literally 1 week to download all my games and updates. I saw this same 4tb HD. But for 15 more dollars you can get a 5tb. only issue I didn't realise was the one I bought need a to be plugged into the wall and not just the console it's self.
I am using a 2tb 7200 rpm internal (nycko adapter) and the stock 1tb hard drive as external (at the time I swapped my hard drive we could not put external storage on a ps4 that’s why the 7200 rpm is internal . It work like a charm and give me 3tb for around 100$
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)
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.
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!
Q1:Which one do you recommend an external HDD that is portable or powered/desktop? Q2: is it ok to use external Hdd for extended time like 4-6 hours or on for 24 hours?
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
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.
I already have a 2TB hardrive in my ps4 so I probably won't think about upgrading until I start to get under 100gb left I'm at 1tb at the moment. but I think it's a good feature to have
Im using the same exact Seagte 4TB drive (ST4000LM016) that they are using in the video, except i get all these stops/halts/stutters on certain games while using it. But if i install the game over to the internal drive (aka system storage) it doesnt do that. Dark Souls 3 is one of the them, the first prerendered cutscene will freeze for like a second or two and will do this quite a few times throughout the cutscene. Not A Hero actually stalls/freezes/halts for like a second or two throughout its gameplay and does this constantly every few seconds or so throughout the game. And the OS stalls/freezes/stutters while scrolling through the game tiles.
Hey bro thanks for the reply. I am in the midst of making a choice between. 4tb or 5tb Seagate backup plus. Or PlayStation Gaming drive from Seagate. I have 1 TB internal. I have 850gb full at the moment. I have around 20 disc. And more than 20 digital games. Most are psvr. The point is I have a baracuda 2tb drive. Internal. Which I can swap with internal or I can go with external. After searching and seeing so many videos. This shows that internal is slower and external wins. But what do you think. Now ps4 has gone thru many updates today I got 6.02. Update too. Any suggestions
I think ur drive is bad, check it on PC, its health and everything. Ext hdds are prone to such failures, you can also re-format it and try again. Thus stuttering refers to hdd having bad sector etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
7:10 my concerns exactly. Really appreciate you doing the research and breaking it down so as to settle any doubts I had
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
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.
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
@@BigBankBailey please get a good quality SSD at least $150 it is the sweet side
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.
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!
These informative videos are unmatched.
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!
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!
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
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 :)
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.
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.
Didn't even notice you had a cold Tom! Hope you get over it fully soon :)
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.
@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.
amazing video, got even more than I was looking for. Thanks!
Was able to try the internal and external ssd so glad u made this vid
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.
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?
Finally! I have been waiting for this video from DF for a long time.
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? 😐
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.
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.
Still a useful and great video in 2019, thank you!
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
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 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.
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.
Tom's voice is really nice to listen to!
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.
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 ???
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
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)
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
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).
This is comparison I was looking for, thanks!
Just the review I was looking for. Thanks a lot.
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.
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!
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.
Thanks for this helpful video man!! You cut my research time down to nothing!! 🙏🏽👍🏽
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.
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.
Internal SSD is the best upgrade that you can do to your PS4 and PS4 Pro. The speed improvement and usability is massive!
Stopped by in preparation for PS5. Thanks guys!
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.
My PS4 pro still has like 600GB left, so I'm good. I love my pro!
squalltheonly Do you have 2 games? Lol
i got the same seagate 2TB version exellent choice people 👌
Top job in explaining stuff man! Liked and subbed;)
clear and concise as ever. good work
Thanks for this. I was really considering an SSD 1 TB for PS4
my boy Tom, 500gb SSD internal with a 4TB external seem like GGs
exactly what i was looking for, thank you!
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!!
great video with just the information I wanted to know. Thanks!
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
2:14 HOW is it a big surprise that the 4TB External loaded FASTER than the internal stock drive?
The original PS4 has a SATA 2 connection which has a bandwidth of 3Gb/sec whereas USB 3.0 caps out at 5Gb/sec so OBVIOUSLY the external hard drive will be faster.
is not about sata2 if is slow on ps4 , , in internal stock drive 2.5 from sony ps4 , don't go fast than 100 mb/s is not even the sata1 limit who is 150 mb/s !! sata3 will change nothing if ur drive is limited at 100 mb/s speed ,,, it's will go 100mb/s even u plug it in sata 3 , 4 , 5 ( when they will exist oneday ) it's just that that the hdd in external is more fast than 100 mb/s ,, maybe 150- 170 mb /s of speed !! that just that ,,, any mechanical hard drive in 2.5 can reach at speed max of usb3 ,,, exept if they ssd about 500 mb/s , is not a problem of sata , but a problem of max speed plate
PSYCHO - If you already knew that, why the phook did you watch the video?
Covered everything I needed. Nice one.
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)
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.
Just tested boot time on prey demo. my internal 500gb drive load time was 1:13 and my external western digital elements 1tb load time was 1:12..... did I buy a slow external drive?
It's ridiculously easy to change the internal drive. No "tampering" needed.
great comparison video. You should have put the links to where to buy the external drive.
iv been using my old WD passport 2tb (from 2012) with my ps4 pro and it works great
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?
Your review was great!! I've been trying to figure out should I go for speed or size. Thanks
Great work as usual!
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.
Great informative video. Thank you. Now I know what I want.
great vid, I had been wondering about this!
Any of you guys noticed that the rear ps4 pro usb has a shielding problem. With my headset (steel series) the sound is awful using that port.
Never tried using it for anything other than VR. I might check it when I have the time.
kraajkase so I bought a ps4 pro tried to use that port for sound and it was bad. I returned and got a new one, same problem, now my headset works flawlessly using the ports on the front.
Brilliant video mate! You're freakin awesome. Thank you
Got my self a 5tb external HD. it took literally 1 week to download all my games and updates. I saw this same 4tb HD. But for 15 more dollars you can get a 5tb. only issue I didn't realise was the one I bought need a to be plugged into the wall and not just the console it's self.
I am using a 2tb 7200 rpm internal (nycko adapter) and the stock 1tb hard drive as external (at the time I swapped my hard drive we could not put external storage on a ps4 that’s why the 7200 rpm is internal . It work like a charm and give me 3tb for around 100$
should of been available day 1 but at least its here now
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)
I needed this video thank you so much!
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.
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!
I will do this, put the more taxing games on the external hdd so I don't have to deal with the loud fans.
Q1:Which one do you recommend an external HDD that is portable or powered/desktop?
Q2: is it ok to use external Hdd for extended time like 4-6 hours or on for 24 hours?
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
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.
I already have a 2TB hardrive in my ps4 so I probably won't think about upgrading until I start to get under 100gb left I'm at 1tb at the moment. but I think it's a good feature to have
Im using the same exact Seagte 4TB drive (ST4000LM016) that they are using in the video, except i get all these stops/halts/stutters on certain games while using it. But if i install the game over to the internal drive (aka system storage) it doesnt do that. Dark Souls 3 is one of the them, the first prerendered cutscene will freeze for like a second or two and will do this quite a few times throughout the cutscene. Not A Hero actually stalls/freezes/halts for like a second or two throughout its gameplay and does this constantly every few seconds or so throughout the game. And the OS stalls/freezes/stutters while scrolling through the game tiles.
Hey bro thanks for the reply. I am in the midst of making a choice between. 4tb or 5tb Seagate backup plus. Or PlayStation Gaming drive from Seagate. I have 1 TB internal. I have 850gb full at the moment. I have around 20 disc. And more than 20 digital games. Most are psvr. The point is I have a baracuda 2tb drive. Internal. Which I can swap with internal or I can go with external. After searching and seeing so many videos. This shows that internal is slower and external wins. But what do you think. Now ps4 has gone thru many updates today I got 6.02. Update too. Any suggestions
I think ur drive is bad, check it on PC, its health and everything.
Ext hdds are prone to such failures, you can also re-format it and try again. Thus stuttering refers to hdd having bad sector etc.