ReCAP – A Quick Review Of The PS4 HD Drive Upgrade
After spending some time with my stock/launch day PlayStation 4, I knew there would come a time when it would eventually run out of space. Being a PlayStation Plus subscriber since inception, I’ve already felt the pains of having to manage the content that was installed on my PlayStation 3 console. I found myself having to pick & choose which games to download and which ones to keep or remove just so I could have the latest & greatest offering from Sony week after week. That grew old very quickly, so I decided to upgrade the hard drive in the PS3 several months back. After having done this, not only was I able to download ALL my PS+ games and have everything from my Plus membership installed, I was no longer wasting my time managing content; it was a win-win situation all around. Besides the cost for the actual hard drive was extremely manageable, here’s a link to the one I used for my PS3 upgrade.
Having learned from this experience, I didn’t want to wait as long to do the same upgrade with the PS4. Re-downloading content & performing backups/restores isn’t any way for a gamer to want to spend his/her time. Because I had minimal content already, I knew doing the upgrade sooner rather than later would benefit me in the long run.
After reading several other sources for some guidance on how to perform the upgrade and what drives would work, I pulled the plug and purchased what I felt best fit my needs currently for a larger HD for the PS4. My decision tree weighted size (because after all, size does matter!) then speed, then cost. I knew I wanted at least 1TB, I knew I wanted something faster than a typical HD so that limited my choices to full solid state drives or hybrid drives and I didn’t want to spend more than $150USD. SSD’s offered the best speed gains but the size I was looking for would come at a premium. I couldn’t justify the cost vs. sizes currently, so almost by default the SSHD was chosen. Here’s a link to the PS4 hard drive I purchased
The actual upgrade process is fairly straight forward, requiring only 5 screws in all to manage and some quick snaps of the outer shell/case then a firmware install. For some in-depth instructions on how to perform the upgrade and some things to watch out for, check out my video from my YouTube channel here:
Post-upgrade I am VERY pleased not only with the peace of mind from knowing I have twice the capacity now for storage but the performance gains from the hybrid drive are noticeable. Boot-up times from stand-by are much faster and it does appear to load games, download data and apply updates quicker. I suppose over the life time of the console and me using it I may earn back a few hours of play time because of the speed increases but that is a cautious estimate since we’re dealing with seconds and I hate comparing anything to my mortality!
If you’ve watched the video, which, if you haven’t why not? I’ll pause for a few and wait until you return… Did you enjoy it? Good; now there are some things I wish I mentioned in the video but it either slipped my mind or I was too focused on making sure I got things right during the recording…
- •The hard drive cage & bay will accept almost any standard 2.5-inch laptop drive.
- •The height cannot exceed 12.5mm. Most drives fall into the 9.5mm range which is a carry-over from the PS3 days. This limits your choices mostly on capacity since I could only find a handful of drives that were larger than 1TB that fit both the size & height requirements.
- •The PS4 has a SATA interface with a speed of roughly 3Gb/s. Finding a drive with a faster interface will only add to your cost and not help with improving performance.
- •You will need to have the latest official PlayStation 4 firmware downloaded & available on a USB drive. The PS4 does not keep an internal copy of the FW anywhere and relies on an external source when replacing the drive.
- •You also need to make sure you have the FULL version of the firmware. Sony offers 2 versions from their FW download site, a smaller update only version which is used to update consoles from a base FW and the full version used when performing a hard drive placement like this OR if completely resetting/reinitializing the PS4. My video has the correct link to the full version in the Description field.
So that pretty much summarizes my ReCAP of my PS4 hard drive upgrade. This is also my FIRST article for wololo’s site so I hope everyone enjoyed it and perhaps learned something from it too. If you have questions, let me know in the Comments section or if you really want to support me follow me on Twitter and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you and Happy Gaming!
ReCAP articles are a quick review of past topics/videos CNPalmer has covered. The article is meant to augment the information from the video/article and not give a rehash of its content. It is also to provide some additional tips and details that may have been skimmed over and could use some additional focus or mention. It is meant for mature audiences only. For more information follow CNPalmer on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel to keep up to date on his other segments and work within the gaming community.
Great idea i just bought a larger hard drive for my ps4 also. I am currently waiting for it to arrive in the mail it is a 20000 rpm 1 tb drive bought it off ebay for 300 it should make a huge difference in speed and performance.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a drive of those specs will not work in the PS4. The only 1TB drives I could find that were < 12.5mm in height were 5400 RPM. I only looked on NewEgg, but I'm 100% sure you are not going to find a 1TB HDD that is less than 12.5mm in height that is over 7200 RPM.
Sounds like a nice catch. I’d watch out for how much heat that drive generates though. Not a whole lot of info on what impacts upgraded drives have on the console overall because of the additional heat and how well is dissipates out. The architecture of the console though really separates the drive from the other components really well so you shouldn’t experience issues like we had with the PS3 for overheating. Also you may not see the full performance gains you’d expect with the 20K RPM drive as if you used it in a PC, just fair warning. Good luck with the upgrade!
PS4 HDD replacement is easy, unfortunately it takes a lot of time.
But if you using the SSD instead of HDD, you can be reduced time for replacement.
Because SSD [read/write] is faster than HDD.
(unfotunately SSD is too expensive XD [^q^])
Is HDD upgrades supported by sony, on the ps4 or do they void your warrentee?
No your warranty is still valid even if you replace the harddrive
Thanks and good idea about using the ssd instead. I might just buy a ssd for my ps4 and put the hdd in my desktop pc.
@john10101 Sony fully supports the HD upgrade. Does not void your warranty one bit. There’s no warranty sticker to get thru on the console to perform the upgrade either, 5 small screws is all there is really. The OFW download site even has instructions about using the correct firmware when replacing/upgrading your drive.
@poker, if you buy a drive, use the Amazon links on the left side of the page to help wololo get a kick back from Amazon sale 😉 They have probably the best prices I’ve seen for compatible drives for the console so far.
@CNPalmer Thanks, i might just do this. ive not done much with my ps4 yet, so it might be a good time to bump it up
*** ps4 i want a ps3 XD.
Buy one?
That is fine by me i was going to buy a drive from amazon anyway and I love this site and would love to help wololo.Also great article keep up the good work.
Thank you! This is pretty much all new to me, the YouTube channel, the blogging etc. so I hope to make the most of it and provide both quantity & quality. I’m all about helping people out and learning along the way. If there’s something you’d like to see for article/video coverage shoot me a msg on Twitter I’ll see what I can pull together.
I found a 2.5 in hard drive for sale with 1.5 tb and a rpm of 100,000 it cost 500. You think its over kill?
What is the drive height? For that kind of money I’d sooner go with a full SSD instead of a traditional drive. Might not get as much space but the performance would be better.
I meant 10000. Calm down every body
They should make a package.. sold it without hard drive lol
Interesting thought. Also interesting is the new PS3 with only a 12GB hard drive… That would last me 1 week with PS+!
WOW 100000 RPM??? That is crazy 20.000 was the fastest i could find where did you find it at? I bet your ps4 would meltdown and catch on fire if you put that beast of a drive in it.
I’m going to take a guess and say he made a typo. I don’t believe there’s a such thing as a 100,000 RPM HDD. He likely meant 10,000 RPM.
You got it, thank you for the clear head
@CNPalmer your welcome yea i will definitely shoot you a msg on twitter if i would like to see a certain type of article posted.
So there is really no one with actual pc hardware knowledge?
20000 rpm drives are not available in 2,5 inch formfaktor, heck they aren’t even available in 3,5 inch, the fastest are around 15k and 18k rpm. Same goes for the guy with 100.000 rpm hdd.
AND ssd’s are not necessarily faster than a standard 7200 rpm 3,5 inch hdd. It depends very very VERY MUCH on the data transfered. While a ssd is much faster in seek and r/w of small data packages, their perfomance drops in consecutive read and write of huge data junks as the data on a ssd is not written consecutive but spread all over flash mem and or even spread across different banks. So the controller of the ssd has everytime a big junk is read to switch around like crazy, while you don’t have that behavior on a standard hdd.
On a standard hdd (not fragmented) data is written in one consecutive cycle, and also read in one consecutive cycle.
As for hybrid discs, they are a timebomb, the ssd part is smaller and used for frequently read and written data (like a big cache), the cells are more likely to get corrupt and in the end might even corrupt the data on the hdd part itself, as the drive does not know which one is correct or not.
And as summary, you will all be fine using a standard notebook 2,5 inch hdd, does not matter if 5400 or 7200 rpm. Just watch the brand and size, seagate is ok and wd is good too. Samsung drives are a subsidary of seagate now and hitachi was swallowed from wd.
Best price and performance for 2,5 inch hdds for your bucks lies around 1TB and 1,5TB.
Ssd’s are only for notebooks which are carried around much OR for pc enthusiasts which want to boot win 7 in 5 seconds or less (or those guys using them as cache like myself). Again the ps4 will not benefit from that much, the resellers and ssd producers will benefit from you.
rpm 10000 is what i mean, 20000 is not real thought
It is true I do not know a lot about hardware i only know the basics.So what is your opinion which type of drive would the ps4 get the most benefits from ssd or hdd?
The basic question is: WHAT IS THE PS4?
A GAME CONSOLE.
What is the purpose of game console?
To ensure that everyone owning that device, has the same carefree game experience without any problems or hardships.
That is the purpose of a game console.
So what would happen if the performance of the console is altered by something like read/write speeds of a hdd? Everyone would have a different experience, for a certain group of people it would like paradise, while the not so fortune ones would burn down in heck and swear never to touch that device again, ultimately leading them to the believe the ps4 has inferior hardware.
So what is sony or any other game console produce doing to ensure that everyone has the VERY SAME performance in their machine? They limit the bandwidth down to a bare minimum, so that everybody with everykind of setup meets the very same requirement.
Sorry for the lenghty explanation but I needed to clear that out.
If you ask me what kind of hdd I would use, well for the ps4 definitely SIZE over extreme performance, so to say I would get a myself a 2,5″ WD 1TB or 1.5 TB blue, black or red(WD10JPVT.
(NOT green because those are the quality drop outs without even having a fixed rotation speed, those will die fast)
Or I would get a seagate spinpoint (ST1000LM024/HN-M101MBB) but NOT a seagate sshd (timebomb) and is intended for notebooks.
All very valid points on performance & level playing field. However, changing the HD would not really affect the game play performance once you’ve started playing especially for online play. Everything is already loaded into memory. Your level might load faster than the next guy’s but your game play “experience” is really determined more by the speed of your network connection not the speed of your storage device.
I’d also point out that you’re really not going to be doing a lot of writes to the NAND of the drive, mostly reads as the data is optimized in that section for what you use mostly, especially for a console, this would mean whatever your favorite game would be that you launch all of the time.
That’s not to say there isn’t an unlimited lifespan of the drive itself, I completely agree with your rundown of some life expectancy for all models, however, I have yet to run into a drive that has outlived it years because it reached some R/W limit; I find most failures are from quality control issues & actual physical product wear.
I see you got what I meant, it not necessary to waste much money on an expensive ssd, waste it on games or other stuff instead.
Well regarding the lifespan of ssd’s and hdd’s, I have had failure of both, hdd’s suddenly stoping to be recognized and or spin up, sudden increase of bad cluster, head crashes due to debris on the plater, head crashes due to shock, burnt and or damaged controllers due to power fluctuation, bad firmware flashes,… I’ve had it all.
Just to add to your phrase, ssd’s in most cases won’t die suddenly, it is more (from my own experience) likely a lingering decay of blocks, first only one block, the next time you make a hardware check 12 blocks,… system stability decreases, strange lockups and freezes increase… thats a good sign of a dying ssd, the same symptoms as a dying ram.
For the ps4 your point with more read than write cycles is true, it only writes at the start up, when downloading, when saving.
A pc does more with a ssd (depending on configuration), for example if the ssd is your main drive for the OS then also the pagefile and hiberfiles are present there, it out sources frequent needed data and places it there even if your drive is fast as heck, increasing the wear on the cells. Additional (for M$ only) it performs recurring defragmenting (which is not needed for ssd) and that also wears ssd’s down if not deactivated from the very start.
As for the ps4 I don’t know if they have something like a defragmenting of data, but I can imagine yes, and I also guess you can’t turn it off as that would require syscall access.
I think that is where the “Rebuild Database” option from the safe mode menu comes into play. This is as close to a “defrag” I think that you’ll get on a console. I don’t think this is ever run automatically by the console though. And I have yet to see anything like the “check disk” routine like the PS3 would run when shutdown improperly on the PS4. I’m not going to risk a short on the new console to see if it exists, I’ll wait for a genuine hard lock-up and then see what happens.
Sorry to hear about your past experiences with drives. I’ve had my fair share of issues with uSD cards in phones, most of the times its as simple as some bad static electricity that turns it bad.
heard sumgame u would have to install so i would think hhd be better as storage would think that solid state be better fo faster game loads but heard ssd drive break faster. think if the games mostly streaming wouldend use up much hard drive space unless u had to install it so mainly load differace and which hard drive would last longer having to do alot of reading and writting but as fo my ps4 hard drive upgrade was thinking about getting like a hard drive doc that has dual hard drives and a harddrive clone thing so like 3 harddrive… also thinking to upgrade the wifi antena sony put like tiny cell phone antenas in the ps4 looks like cant go to far playing with remote play unless its like over the internet…
Thanks you have been helpful.
SSDs are way too expensive right now for the amount of disk space given, although your drive may last longer due to no risk of the disk being scratched and data loss. I’d like to see the long term results on these different drives.
Great guide BTW.
Thank you! It really will boil down to how much you’re willing to spend and what that spend will get you. You can certainly go the traditional route for the lest amount of money and get the most space with the least amount of performance gains. Or you could spend a lot of money, get improved performance but lose space. The old saying of you have 3 options… pick 2 is never more true than here.
yesyes, ssd is the way to go
Has any one tried using a sata extension Cable to do a 3.5. Yes I know you need external power you can but them
That’s a good idea, I wonder if using a USB to SATA adapter, and putting the 2.5″ drive in a USB powered enclosure would work?
im not touching a ps4 until after the holidays maybe around april or may ill get one
I highly doubt any overheating problems would arise no matter what drive you use. Drives manufactured in the form factor utilized by PS4 are intended to be used in mobile applications where heat dissipation is poor. I have owned 10000 rpm drives and I have owned 5400 rpm drives and I can tell you that it doesn’t take a whole lot of airflow to keep a hard drive cool especially if it doesn’t run constantly(not sure if the PS4 stops the drive during idle periods but it would help). Just having vents near the hdd is usually sufficient. That is until they become blocked with dust. Dust is a MAJOR contributor to computers overheating. I always tell people they should blow out their computers with either air duster or a compressor at least twice a year. I wouldn’t doubt that dust caused many of the PS3 and xbox360 failures. Look at the fan sitting in your bedroom or the back of your microwave you might be surprized. I don’t buy into the SSDs yet. Flash has a limited number of write cycles and that, to me, outweighs the benefits. I have 20+ year old hard drives that still retain everything written to them. I doubt any modern SSDs could come close to that. I agree with Thrawn above. Until SSD technology improves, stick with HDDs for mass storage.
inothernews,
is ther a new opencma qcma or cmahack for fw 3.00 ?
thkx
bytheway i hate the preorders
cant u just buy it in a store … no u cant
u can preorder in store and buy online
the world upsidedown
as soon as enough people start *** about running out of space, i think external hdd support will be implemented for the PS4. especially since the largest internal 2.5 hdd is only 2TB, and they are expecting a 5-10 year lifespan for the console. even though it’s really easy, there aren’t that many people who would actually bother with a hdd upgrade after filling up the 500GB. but everyone can plug in an ext. hdd. with ease.