UPDATE: We have now confirmed that you cannot store PS5 games on an external hard drive. You can only store PS4 games off an external hard drive, and you can also play PS4 games of it. Sony has said they are looking into potentially making it so that we can store PS5 games on an external hard drive, but it isn’t possible at the moment.
I’ve seen this being thrown a lot over the last few days. The external hard drive situation for PS5 is a little bit more confusing than it is on Xbox Series X.
Both are confusing given the fact that you can’t just use a regular external hard drive for PS5/Xbox Series X storage, but at least Xbox Series X has a proprietary solution (that we still don’t know the price of). The PS5 has a NVMe SSD slot, meaning the PS5 will let you use similarly spec SSDs, but because the type of SSD that the PS5 uses has barely reached the market, you can’t currently buy them. This is also due to the fact that Sony can’t advise which models will be compatible, so you’d be best off holding out before buying anything at this point.
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Just as a word of warning, there are retailers offering external hard drives in the PS5 section like this one on EB Games, and technically, it will work but only for PS4 games, which is the important part. Sony had confirmed a long while ago, that we’d only be able to play PS4 games off the external hard drives that we’re familiar with, and it’s the same for the Xbox Series X too.
If you’re desperate to buy a USB 3.0 external HD for your PS5/Xbox Series X, these ones or these ones are a lot cheaper than what’s available on EB Games, but otherwise, don’t buy any hard drives for either the PS5/Xbox Series X at the moment. If you’ve got an external hard drive that works with both your PS4/Xbox One, that’ll work on your PS5/Xbox Series X for PS4/Xbox One games, so hold onto that. It’s also been confirmed for Xbox Series X/S at least, that you’ll be able to move X/S games from an external hard drive onto your console to play them. It’s unclear if the same thing will apply for PS5, but regardless you won’t be able to play PS5/Xbox Series X games off these externals.
As soon as we know more information about the PS5 compatible external hard drives and more detailed release information about the Xbox Series X external SSD, we’ll let you know. Just for reference, the Xbox Series X has 1TB of storage and the PS5 only has 825GB of storage, so even if game sizes are smaller next-gen, it’s going to be a bit of a struggle.
https://press-start.com.au/news/playstation/2020/09/17/ps5-games-accessories-preorder-australia/
