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External Hard Drives

Posted: March 10th, 2017, 4:27 pm
by VideoGameCritic
I've been thinking about how whenever I get a new PS4/Xbox One game I have to go through the routine of uninstalling older games just to make room. Is there a solution to this?

I've heard you can buy external hard drives (for the PS4 at least) but you can't play games directly off of them. I assume you have to copy stuff back and forth. If anyone can shed some light I'd appreciate it.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 10th, 2017, 5:52 pm
by Steve
I have a 2TB external hard drive for my Xbox One and play almost everything off that drive. It is the default location for all installs. There has been no need for me to copy back and forth. I'm not sure if it is true (or if I believe it) but I've heard games play better off an external drive.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 11th, 2017, 4:25 am
by ESauce
Yeah you can play off the hard drive on Xbox One at least (not sure on PS4). If you get a good one with high speed then you will get better performance off the external hard drive. I use a 2TB drive. I'm not curious enough to bother testing the performance, but it's nice not to have to uninstall games to make space.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 11th, 2017, 1:59 pm
by VideoGameCritic
Thanks for the info guys! How much do these hard drives run?

I think I'd be more likely to get one for my PS4 since I had a lot more games for that system.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 11th, 2017, 5:40 pm
by ESauce
I think I paid $80 for my Western Digital 2TB hard drive.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 11th, 2017, 6:19 pm
by ptdebate
Just chiming in to confirm 2 things:

1) Games installed to an external hard drive do load faster than games stored to internal memory. This is because the USB 3.0 interface for external drives transfers data at a maximum rate of 500MB/s whereas the SATA II internal drive is limited to a maximum of 300MB/s.

2)Due to a recent update, the PS4 can now play games directly from external media just like the Xbox One.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 11th, 2017, 8:03 pm
by GTS
I'm with everyone on this. Having a download code inside a deluxe package is pathetic. They should not underestimate how many people would purchase a physical copy, given that it's Sonic.

Due to the low amount of internal memory for the Switch, it's not the best console for downloadables. Hopefully this means it'll see a lot of physical releases.

Re: External Hard Drives

Posted: March 19th, 2017, 10:15 pm
by TimPossible
ptdebate wrote:Just chiming in to confirm 2 things:

1) Games installed to an external hard drive do load faster than games stored to internal memory. This is because the USB 3.0 interface for external drives transfers data at a maximum rate of 500MB/s whereas the SATA II internal drive is limited to a maximum of 300MB/s.

2)Due to a recent update, the PS4 can now play games directly from external media just like the Xbox One.


Yeah it's crazy the PS4 just finally got this with the last update. Xbox One has had it for a couple years. I am one who swapped out my original internal 500GB hard drive with a 2TB as that is the largest that would fit. last week I just bought a 5TB and had over 100 games to install on it.

With my slow internet I had about 500GB of just game updates for these games to be installed. They are still downloading now, lol. After everything finishes I will have about 1.8TB left overall with 7Tb of hard drives. Hoping this will get me through as I can get rid of some of the older yearly released sports titles