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. Once it's free of its moorings, you'll be able to lift the cover off to reveal part of the PS4's metal skeleton. There's not much damage you can do here, though, as it's just the hard drive on show. A key benefit to upgrading your hard drive is adding extra storage space to your PS4. There's only 500GB of space on the standard PS4 and PS4 Slim and a larger 1TB on PS4 Pro. On base hardware, it'll only take a few big games to completely fill up your hard drive.Games like Call of Duty: Warzone and Marvel’s Avengers need over 100GB of hard drive space, making upgrading your PS4 hard drive very tempting.

When it comes to wanting to upgrade your PS4 hard drive, the first thing to do is to buy your replacement hard drive or SSD. The PS4 uses a 2.5-inch SATA format for hard disks and SSDs, and it’s quite an archaic design now – it’s generally only used for more affordable drives.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.

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. Upgrading your PS4 hard disk does take a little bit of research, and it can be daunting to open your console – even if the process is pleasingly simple. However, whichever decision you make, you'll be happy with the expanded space. 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?Read and write speeds were great in testing. The 2000MB/s speed you see on the box is as good as you'll get in an external hard drive, but in reality, it translates to some great load times and transfer speeds on PS5 and PC. I had a load of game capture footage stored on my PS5 I had been meaning to move across to my computer for video editing, and even though it was about 30 clips spanning a total of 22GB, the P40 swallowed it up from the PS5 in about a minute. The same was true of games once I formatted the drive for some extra storage. I transferred three games that added up to 18GB, and it moved across in just shy of a minute. Right now, there are only two reasons to choose a desktop external hard drive. First, they can run to larger capacities: even the biggest portable drives max out at 5TB, while desktop drives go up to the full 8TB maximum capacity. You’d have to have a massive games library, though, to make that a deciding factor. Otherwise, some desktop drives have a 7,200RPM spindle speed, where portable drives usually only manage 5,400RPM. This can mean slightly better performance, and slightly shorter loading times.

And, if you’re able to use an SSD, then you can get a great speed boost as well as lashings of extra capacity. Whether you go for a hard disk or an SSD, it’s a no-brainer.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? High dynamic range - With an HDR enabled TV, compatible PS4 games display an intensely vibrant range of colours, closer to the full spectrum that the human eye can see