Sony PlayStation 4 1TB Console - Black

Product Information

For enthusiast gamers, you'll no longer have to delete games to make space for the new additions to your library. Just think about it: the biggest games can top 100GB these days, and the PS4’s original 500GB and 1TB drives just can’t store that many games. The best PS4 SSD is either an external one, or a SATA SSD that can replace your internal HDD. Either will bring you massive quality of life updates to a console that's approaching 10 years on the market. In terms of internal options, we'd recommend the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD, or, if you're watching your pennies, the Seagate 1TB Gaming SSHD ST1000LM014. Do PS4 games run better on SSD?

The only problem is, this is meant for professionals, not necessarily gamers. Its short cable is almost as annoying as its high price tag. Regardless, this is definitely one of the best external hard drives on the market if you want a portable solution for gaming, work, or content creation. Best PS4 SSD: FAQs Is PS4 better with SSD? How to choose the best external hard drive for your PS4 What should you look for in a PS4 hard drive? Once you're happy you're not about to wipe out your gaming history, make sure there's no disc in the drive and turn the PS4 off completely (not standby). If your PS4 heads to standby as standard, hold down on the PS button until the power menu pops up, then select turn off PS4. Next, unplug all the PS4's cables (that's the HDMI lead and power cable most likely).You can only have one extended storage drive connected to your PS4, so you really want the biggest drive you can afford. Games these days can eat up vast amounts of storage space, so unless you’re exclusively planning on playing Fortnite or Minecraft, you’re going to need a large external drive. Any drive you install into your PS4 needs to be under 9.5mm tall thanks to the size of the caddy that lives inside the PS4, which protects the drive and keeps it in place. This is no problem for SSDs, but it does prove to be a little limiting as many 4TB hard drives are a shade too chunky.

Going beyond the extra space a hard drive provides, if you slot a super-fast SSD into your console, you'll also see a significant speed improvement. Although you'll want to read up on the pros and cons of using an SSD before you do that.If you’re on a tighter budget then you can ditch the hybrid portion of the hard disk and opt for a conventional drive. This won’t deliver much of a performance boost over the PS4’s normal hard disks, but Seagate’s drives are certainly no slower. We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the PS4 or PS4 Pro. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive. Crucial’s drives don’t quite have the performance levels of Samsung’s drives, but in the PS4 that is less important thanks to their older storage connectivity systems. Drives like the Crucial BX500 still deliver a good performance boost over the PS4’s internal drives, and they’re just as reliable as Samsung’s products. This is such a good SATA-type SSD, that I'm even considering it for my PS3 to breathe new life and durability into that console!