Best hdd for ps4

[poker_1987]

Are wd elements ok? Or is it best to find a 7200rpm

[DaivRules]

11 minutes ago, poker_1987 said:

Are wd elements ok? Or is it best to find a 7200rpm

 

Don't get an HDD if you're going to replace the HDD. Just get an SSD.

 

WD Blue SSD is a well-priced option.

 

[poker_1987]

But I can get 4gig for an external for the price of 1gig internal 

 

Is it that much faster

[DaivRules]

6 minutes ago, poker_1987 said:

But I can get 4gig for an external for the price of 1gig internal 

 

Is it that much faster

 

Yes, if you're talking about an external drive, go for the larger drive. I mentioned specifically replacing the HDD. Internally, yes it would be much, much faster (and cooler and quieter).

 

Externally, you're already bottlenecked at the connection so it's not as apparent.

 

[de_digibeet]

Loading times from an ssd are barely noticeably better on a ps4. Durability is a point that would make an ssd worthy of consideration. Backing up your saves regularly kinda negates the durability gain.
For storage you can hook up a 4 TB usb drive, doesn't much matter which. Games play fine from it. Saves are stored on the internal drive.

 

For internal, you really need to check drive thickness. It can only be so many millimeters and most (maybe all?) 4 TB internal drives are thicker. I have a 2 TB internal and a 4 TB usb drive, that'll work for now.

 

*edit*

I was proven wrong on the loading times a bit further down the topic, the ssd loading times are quite a bit faster apparently.

Edited December 29, 2021 by de_digibeet

[SnowxSakura]

13 minutes ago, de_digibeet said:

Loading times from an ssd are barely noticeably better on a ps4. Durability is a point that would make an ssd worthy of consideration. Backing up your saves regularly kinda negates the durability gain.
For storage you can hook up a 4 TB usb drive, doesn't much matter which. Games play fine from it. Saves are stored on the internal drive.

 

For internal, you really need to check drive thickness. It can only be so many millimeters and most (maybe all?) 4 TB internal drives are thicker. I have a 2 TB internal and a 4 TB usb drive, that'll work for now.

You might be thinking of the ps3. On the ps4 load times between ssd and hdd is pretty large for some games. GTA5 loads story 47 seconds faster on an SSD. If you're on a pro, you get the full ssd speeds too. Plus the UI benefits from the increased speeds

[Kolm]

When the original PS4 released there were a lot of articles that it's not advisable in the long run to use an SSD as an internal hard disk.

The problem is that PS4 firmware doesn't support SSD's and doesn't do the necessary maintenance for a SSD to be kept in good shape.

By now those articles are snowed in by people that put an SSD in and say 'it's all fine'.
It's fine at the start but after awhile (a few years or many years depending on usage) it'll deteriorate and become slow to even unreadable.

 

I tried to find the old articles again but could only find certain forum post mentions on it. PS4 not supporting the TRIM command for an SSD was one of the problems.

Also: SSD's have a limited number of writes for each bit on them. Without TRIM command more will be rewritten over and over even when it was already deleted (see article below).
With the Share function on, you might run through your writes even quicker as you might expect.

 

And you always need to keep a good chunk (10-20%%) of your SSD free to avoid it from becoming slow.

That has to do with how an SSD works. More on that in this article below the header 'Reads, Writes, and Erasure':
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/210492-extremetech-explains-how-do-ssds-work

 

For those reasons I upgraded my internal PS4 hard disk to a 2TB SSHD. It combines the positives points of both HDD (unlimited writes, no SSD firmware support needed) and SSD (speed) and in the end it comes in between those two when it comes down to speeds and it's a lot cheaper compared to SSD's.

Only thing I'm wondering now is if the PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim have firmware support for SSD's... hard to find info on that.

[DaivRules]

1 hour ago, Kolm said:

I tried to find the old articles again but could only find certain forum post mentions on it. PS4 not supporting the TRIM command for an SSD was one of the problems.

Also: SSD's have a limited number of writes for each bit on them. Without TRIM command more will be rewritten over and over even when it was already deleted (see article below).

SSD controllers and newer memory module types have largely mitigated all those concerns a couple generations ago. 
 

 

[de_digibeet]

16 hours ago, SnowxSakura said:

You might be thinking of the ps3. On the ps4 load times between ssd and hdd is pretty large for some games. GTA5 loads story 47 seconds faster on an SSD. If you're on a pro, you get the full ssd speeds too. Plus the UI benefits from the increased speeds

I remember reading some articles about it way back when, that it barely loaded any faster for the games they tested.

I'm not up to date on the latest stuff and it seems to also depend upon which ps4 you have. An pro or not already makes a difference apparently.

[SnowxSakura]

20 minutes ago, de_digibeet said:

I remember reading some articles about it way back when, that it barely loaded any faster for the games they tested.

I'm not up to date on the latest stuff and it seems to also depend upon which ps4 you have. An pro or not already makes a difference apparently.

Mine was tested on the destiny 1 fat ps4 for the loading times.

[ars]

19 hours ago, de_digibeet said:

Loading times from an ssd are barely noticeably better on a ps4.

 

"Barely."

 

 

[de_digibeet]

Duly noted!
And damn, what insane loading times ...

[Kolm]

On 28-12-2021 at 11:59 PM, DaivRules said:

SSD controllers and newer memory module types have largely mitigated all those concerns a couple generations ago. 

 

Good to know! I only researched it to all possible depth near release when I upgraded my system. After that I only kept up with general info like the speeds.

 

6 hours ago, ars said:

 

"Barely."

 

Video is from 2020 and @de_digibeet clearly refers to years ago so it's not really comparable as SSD's became a lot faster in recent years, especially random reads. Back near release the differences in time between HDD and SSD were not this big and certainly not that big that they would justify the way higher price of SSD back then. So... times really have changes to what de_digibeet and me have in our memory  

The video below is from 2014. The gain you got from putting in a 7200rpm HDD in instead of an 5400rpm HDD was often almost on par with with an SSD.
But the biggest downside was that the SSD's were extremely expensive if you wanted a bigger drive. 240GB was $120 dollar and part of that space would go to the system so you might not even be able to install the latest Call of duty's or Red dead redemption 2. 960GB SSD would have been $500-600  

And that on top of problems I mentioned earlier but seem to have been tackled by now.

Prices back then of the drives used in the video according to the article they link in the video:

7200rpm 1TB HDD: $75

240GB SSD: $120

5400rpm 1TB hybrid SSD/HDD (=SSHD): $95

 

 

[ars]

8 hours ago, Kolm said:

Video is from 2020 and @de_digibeet clearly refers to years ago so it's not really comparable as SSD's became a lot faster in recent years, especially random reads. Back near release the differences in time between HDD and SSD were not this big and certainly not that big that they would justify the way higher price of SSD back then. So... times really have changes to what de_digibeet and me have in our memory  

 

This isn't true really. Stock PS4 uses SATA II which caps the bandwidth to roughly 300MB/s, and a SATA to USB converter that will limit the maximum throughput even further. However a 5400 RPM HDD could still not surpass a 100MB/s read, whereas a SATA II SSD easily can. 7200 RPM HDD would be better, but still be left somewhere roughly halfway between the two.

 

One thing of note is a lot of games do all kinds of trickery to obfuscate the load times, including but not limited to having to wait for a fixed amount of time looking at dev and publisher splash screens before you get a main menu, or map transitions showing characters traversing narrow corridors with no way to speed up the animation. This is why things like GTAV become the de facto testing bench for loads on console, because it does a lot of unpacking simply impossible to hide behind forced waits. For PC you could simply run a benchmark of course.

So without further ado, let's see how GTAV PS4 fared in a HDD vs SSD load time comparison back in 2014. Still barely noticeable