PS4 HDD upgrade - is 2TB as big as you can go?

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I don't own a PS4 as of yet, but I'm thinking about buying one this week.

I'm the kind of gamer who doesn't ever want to "clean the fridge" - a constant problem with the original Wii. With mandatory installation of PS4 games, the stock 500GB drive would only suit around 10 games total - far too few for the harddrive to have much longevity and thus forcing the cleaning of the fridge.

So while I budget out buying a PS4, I'm also budgeting out replacing the harddrive so I won't have to for a long time to come.

I've done this before with my PS3 slim when I put in a 750GB drive several years ago. I'm assuming the PS4 is about the same process. So, questions.

1. Does the PS4 accept standard 3.5" Harddrives or do I have to use the smaller 2.5" only? I'm assuming 2.5", but I just want to be sure.

2. Assuming I can only use 2.5", what are the biggest drives out there currently? I did some searching but couldn't find any 2.5" 3TB drives....so I guess that means the biggest available for PS4 is 2TB?

3. If anyone has upgraded, can you recommend specific drives that might be found for decent prices? Anything to avoid, tips, etc?

Thanks.

[Flojomojo]

It needs to be a slim laptop drive to fit inside. I recently bought a WD external USB drive for under $100 that worked great, allowing me to out the old 500GB into an external case. 2TB is as big as you can go right now but I suspect if you don't even have a machine now, it will do at least until something bigger comes along.

You might want to install the new drive first thing before you start on your new PS4, because the backup procedure is very slow, probably due to encryption, taking all night to copy 300GB from my old drive. This option has only been available on the most recent firmware.

Alternatively you could do everything from the cloud.

Sony instructions are here.
https://support.us.playstation.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5107/~/upgrade-ps4-hdd

There is an external dingus coming out from a third party if you really want a big drive, it sits up on top like an engine bulge in a hot rod car.

[Flojomojo]

The other thing to remember is that there are two versions of the system software. One is an update, which can be installed from USB if you have a working system. The other is a full install, which is what you need to put on an empty disk. Be sure you have the right files at hand.

Also note that your new disk needs to be formatted as fat32. This is slightly tricky to do from a modern computer but you should be able to figure it out with by downloading a utility.

[Tanooki]

I loathe what they did with the amount of storage games themselves let alone some of the saves use on the thing, my one bitch with the PS4. I've got like 8 games installed to it and then digitally I have pinball arcade on there along with the disc one, little else, and 1/2 the space is ate up. If I bothered to maintain PS+ those games would have me over the cap that I did download to my account. I ended up removing anything I don't own on a disc and all the digital too other than netflix and still it's 1/2 gone which blows.

I never looked, but I imagine a 2TB laptop size drive probably isn't super cheap. The transferring of the data looks odd too so I've never even considered it. This is another of those things I dislike of the added HDD storage era systems, they've turned into computers with undersized hard drives where you're forced to pick and choose what to erase or not until you want to use it again, yet the installs are slower than those on PC while more or less (if not totally) tying up the system while it does it. It's just not cool, right along with the beta releases and huge big patch/downloads that come with it. I've become pretty solidly choosy on what I bother to buy anymore and it plays a fair part of it.

[SAV2880]

The cheapest way to go 2TB right now is to buy a Seagate Expansion external drive and rip the internal drive out of it. I've seen the drives go for as cheap as $70 at Micro Center, so it becomes a decently cheap way to go.

I do recall seeing a 5TB on Engadget too ... But for that price, just buy ten more PS4's!!