One of the more surprising things that I found when reviewing the PS5 is that it doesn’t seem to support external hard drives for PS5 games. It was already confirmed that the internal SSD drive wouldn’t be working at launch (which I also found out after trying a Samsung 980 Pro myself).
When plugging an external hard drive into the PS5, it’s made pretty clear that you can’t store PS5 games on an external with phrases such as “You can install PS4 games to extended storage and play them directly from there”.
At no point is it ever mentioned that you can store PS5 games on the external hard drive.
When trying to move games to the external hard drive that I had plugged in, only PS4 games showed up, which was consistent with that initial message. One saving grace is that you can automatically set the PS5 to install PS4 games on an external hard drive, so that’s pretty handy.
MORE PS5 REVIEW COVERAGE:
- PlayStation 5 Review
- Spider-Man Miles Morales Review
- Astro’s Playroom Review
- The PS5 Doesn’t Let You Store PS5 Games On External Hard Drives
- A Small Amount Of PS4 Games Don’t Run Properly On PS5
- All Of Your Burning PS5 Questions Answered
- The PS5 Activities Feature Is PlayStation’s Answer To Quick Resume And It’s Also A Game Changer
- The PS5 Tells Your Your Play Time For All PS5 And PS4 Games
- The PS5 Comes With 667GB Of Usable Storage
- Here’s Ghost Of Tsushima, God Of War And Days Gone Running At 60FPS On The PS5
It’s unclear why Sony has chosen not to allow you to store PS5 games on an external hard drive, but with only 667GB available from day one, no doubt it’s going to fill up fairly quickly.
It’s worth mentioning that we are still on a non-final UI for our PS5 review unit, so this could change, but given the wording in the UI and also the fact that Sony only referenced storing PS4 games on an external hard drive in a recent video, it definitely seems to be the case.
You can find our PS5 review and a bunch of other information on our launch hub here.
