How’s Performance Using External HDDs?

[Kazduin]

I heard the performance was mixed bag and causing a number of issues with the PS5. If those issues have been fixed however I could really use the storage space. Anyone here who uses one?

[Kazduin]

I know nobody has replied to this yet but I ordered a western digital external HDD and I’ll be updating in here how it performs with PS5. Gonna round up all my PS4 games and stick them on there and save the SSD for PS5 games

[OpenScars]

I bought a Samsung T7 SSD, 1tb external and it's been great and I've had no issues.

So much more space on the PS5 now!

[Morfea]

I use and have used ext. SSD (Samsung T5 1Tb SSD) with my PS5 since 2 weeks after launch. I had the active PS4 game on the consol storage at start, but tried with the ext drive and didn’t notice any difference. Might have taken an extra sec or so to load up from start, nothing noticable.

 

Once I had a crash that it said was due to the ext drive, that was when I put the PS5 in rest mode with a PS4 game from the drive still active. When I started the consol again, it started blinking and I had to rebuild the database.

 

Never had any other issues with the ext hdd or the consol. So now I always close PS4 games before using rest mode. Not sure if they fixed it, if it was just that once or if it’s still there.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Morfea

[Kazduin]

UPDATE: I just received a Western Digital 5 TB external HDD and I’m currently downloading and installing 1 TB of PS4 games haha. Oddly enough, none of my installed PS4 games would allow me to move them to the external HDD(Ghost Of Tsushima, God Of War, Shadow Of The Colossus) but that’s not a big deal. Anyone possibly know why though? It would have been much more convenient.  As far as downloading goes, so far so good; no errors or anything. I’ll update on performance when I get around to playing a game off it.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Kazduin

[Boooda]

I have an external in mine and it works well for the most part. The only problems I've had came from using rest mode so I try to avoid that as much as possible. 

[Z1MZUM]

I have a 4tb portable and it works fine on all ps4 games.

[Kazduin]

Just to update this thread. I don’t know why but the HD camera  for PS5 does NOT work while playing PS4 games which is nonsensical to me.

[snakebit10]

I have had my 2 TB hooked up to mine since the end of November when I got my PS5. Only issue I had was AC Syndicate wouldn't launch from the HDD and I had to move the game to the SSD on the PS5. Other than that I haven't had any issues.

[Goalminer]

I'm new to HDD, looking into buying my first one in the 2TB range since I don't have a ton of downloads. Any recommendations?

[turniplord]

I did a review for the WD_Black P10 here: https://www.gamepitt.co.uk/western-digital-wd_black-p10-5tb-external-hdd-hardware-review-and-ps5-setup-tutorial/

As they asked for the unit back after the review, I bought myself the 8TB version and it's been fine. However, I've literally filled it (I have over 3k PS4/PS5 games) and that means it gets slow, like takes a few seconds to scroll through the library, the dash is unusable for about a minute or two if updating, installing or deleting a game whilst it rescans the database, and if it crashes they you literally can't do anything for about an hour until it's fully rescanned everything.

But, 9/10 times, the HDD is perfect. I found that once it hit 500 games (doesn't matter about their size), that's when the operating system started to get a little sluggish. I have about 800 installed atm.

So, keep it under 500 and it'll be fine  

In regards to rest mode. For me, if I have a game running, so it suspends in rest mode, or I have downloads running - it's fine. If there are no games running or downloads, it can sometimes 'crash' the PS5. My theory - if the HDD is doing nothing, it may turn itself off after a few hours, as a built-in power save feature. That could be why it crashes and turns off the system. So, if I have no game suspended, I just turn the console fully off each time instead of putting it in rest mode.

[ImMagnetz]

I play my PS4 games on my PS5 and have them all stored on the external hard drive I used with my PS4. No problems. It's a 2TB Seagate.

[grimydawg___]

I play my PS4 games on an Hdd and have had no problems.  

49 minutes ago, Goalminer said:

I'm new to HDD, looking into buying my first one in the 2TB range since I don't have a ton of downloads. Any recommendations?

Bought this one Click me for only $100 (US) at the time.  No issues so far and I've had it for two years.

[Tommiieeh]

On 04/04/2021 at 10:26 PM, Kazduin said:

UPDATE: I just received a Western Digital 5 TB external HDD and I’m currently downloading and installing 1 TB of PS4 games haha. Oddly enough, none of my installed PS4 games would allow me to move them to the external HDD(Ghost Of Tsushima, God Of War, Shadow Of The Colossus) but that’s not a big deal. Anyone possibly know why though? It would have been much more convenient.  As far as downloading goes, so far so good; no errors or anything. I’ll update on performance when I get around to playing a game off it.

i would like to know how fast it ist with the hdd and whats the speed of it. i think it may be not the best choice cause the hdd heavily bottlenecks the loading times of the ps5.

[HusKy]

27 minutes ago, Tommiieeh said:

i would like to know how fast it ist with the hdd and whats the speed of it. i think it may be not the best choice cause the hdd heavily bottlenecks the loading times of the ps5.

 

PS4 games in most cases cannot reap any benefits from fast PS5 SSD anyway.

[Tommiieeh]

2 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

PS4 games in most cases cannot reap any benefits from fast PS5 SSD anyway.

i think it will profit from it. especially when the external hdd has a speed of 5400. i own a ps4 with an internal ssd and the loading times are way shorter then with the hdd it came with. also it has been tested with some games and it seems that not all, but many games are profiting from being booted from an ssd!

 

[SnowxSakura]

11 hours ago, Kazduin said:

Just to update this thread. I don’t know why but the HD camera  for PS5 does NOT work while playing PS4 games which is nonsensical to me.

PS4 games run in a "PS4 mode" that's why the PS5 camera doesn't work while playing them

[HusKy]

38 minutes ago, Tommiieeh said:

i think it will profit from it. especially when the external hdd has a speed of 5400. i own a ps4 with an internal ssd and the loading times are way shorter then with the hdd it came with. also it has been tested with some games and it seems that not all, but many games are profiting from being booted from an ssd!

 

Maybe I should have been more eloquent with my answer but the video proves my point -- PS4 games don't take advantage of PS5 SSD. They load faster, but considering the load times for external SSD were the same, it's pretty obvious the internal SSD is being artificially slowed down.

 

Needless to say, PS4 game installed on internal SSD will load faster than external HDD and that's awesome.

Edited April 8, 2021 by HusKy

[Tommiieeh]

2 minutes ago, HusKy said:

 

Maybe I should have been more eloquent with my answer but the video proves my point -- PS4 games don't take advantage of PS5 SSD. They load faster, but considering the load times for external SSD were the same, it's pretty obvious the internal SSD is being artificially slowed down.

maybe i also shouldve chosen better words! what i meant was that external ssd should be a lot faster then an external hdd. even for ps4 games, no matter if they are played on ps4 or ps5.

[locoporkko]

If you have ps4 and ps5 you can put the same hdd or sdd external in both consoles or you cant do?????

[Z1MZUM]

16 hours ago, locoporkko said:

If you have ps4 and ps5 you can put the same hdd or sdd external in both consoles or you cant do?????

 

Yeah but make sure you don't have a duplicate game on the interal HDD.

[locoporkko]

50 minutes ago, Z1MZUM said:

 

Yeah but make sure you don't have a duplicate game on the interal HDD.

Thanks I will make sure that the games of the hdd or ssd are different from the games of the ssd or internal hdd

[KL_Archive_One]

I'm running an 8TB WD Black drive.  Performance is comparable with running from the internal on a PS4.  Some PS4 games show a little improvement when running on an SSD but not enough to warrant the extra cost.  So far spinning rust seems fine.  For PS4 I'm favoring pure storage space.

[Z1MZUM]

3 hours ago, locoporkko said:

Thanks I will make sure that the games of the hdd or ssd are different from the games of the ssd or internal hdd

 

Good idea, The use on both consoles worked fine for me until I had Black ops 4 on the ps4 internal and on the ps5 external.

[Kazduin]

On 4/9/2021 at 2:23 AM, TokyoHome said:

I'm running an 8TB WD Black drive.  Performance is comparable with running from the internal on a PS4.  Some PS4 games show a little improvement when running on an SSD but not enough to warrant the extra cost.  So far spinning rust seems fine.  For PS4 I'm favoring pure storage space.

Yeah I have been running the Western Digital 5 TB drive and had little to no issues. I did however start moving PS4 games I would actively be playing to the SSD. Spinning it off the disc works fine but I’d rather wait for it to port over and benefit from the speed of the SSD.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Kazduin