Thinking of replacing PS4 Hard-drive with an SSD, is 256GB enough?

[saif96]

so i've been thinking, in november im planning on getting a PS4 Pro, but i do wanna upgrade it as much as possible, but i guess the only upgradable part is the SSD so i wanna get the best SSD around and i think the Samsung 860 Pro is the best, the reason why i want a PS4 Pro is for the PS4 & console exclusive games, im planning on getting these games is 256GB enough?

 

Last of us

Last of us 2

Read dead redemption 2

God of War

 

these are the only games im planning to game on, is 256GB enough you think? how much do you think GB will be using with these 4 games?

[chckovsky]

860 Evo is the best one that still makes sense. 860 pro is both slower and faster, depending on what you are measuring, but the price difference is not worth it.

[saif96]

2 minutes ago, chckovsky said:

860 Evo is the best one that still makes sense. 860 pro is both slower and faster, depending on what you are measuring, but the price difference is not worth it.

do you think the 256GB is enough though?

[chckovsky]

Could only find data for last of us, which is around 50GB. No, you should probably go for 500GB.

[chckovsky]

However - I'm not sure one actually can use an SSD in a PS4. Someone else has to comment on that.

[GoldenLag]

Grab an Crucial MX500 series SSD to save a buck. 

[saif96]

3 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Grab an Crucial MX500 series SSD to save a buck. 

nahh, not aiming to save a buck im aiming for the best of the best 

[saif96]

5 minutes ago, chckovsky said:

However - I'm not sure one actually can use an SSD in a PS4. Someone else has to comment on that.

yes it can i've seen youtube videos that shows that it can

[saif96]

6 minutes ago, chckovsky said:

Could only find data for last of us, which is around 50GB. No, you should probably go for 500GB.

wow really dont think i need 500GB im only going to play console exclusive games only, and most games are less then 50-40GB so i think the 256GB can handle it

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, saif96 said:

nahh, not aiming to save a buck im aiming for the best of the best 

The 500GB MX500 is a steal. And 250 GB fills up quickly.

 

The MX500 offer rather good performance, you wont notice much difference in loadtimes

[saif96]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

The 500GB MX500 is a steal. And 250 GB fills up quickly.

 

The MX500 offer rather good performance, you wont notice much difference in loadtimes

but its just 4 games? do i really need a 500GB for these 4 only?

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, saif96 said:

but its just 4 games? do i really need a 500GB for these 4 only?

Those 4 games alone probably take up 200GB. Then its pluss OS of the PS4 and other apps. 

 

256GB will fill up quick. And you dont want to run an SSD with little storage left, it prectically kills its lifespan

[Skiiwee29]

I replaced my 500gb HDD with a 2tb Firecuda SSHD. This would be your best option for price, performance, and storage space on the a PS4. 256gb is not enough.. you would get like 3 games on it, maybe 4. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

256 GB isn't much even for just the exclusives. I only buy exclusives on my system and the 500 GB drive it came with isn't enough to keep everything I have on it. First thing you have to remember is you gotta deduct 7% of the drive's size because hard drives are sold in terms of Gigabytes (10^9 bytes) while your filesystem is measured in terms of Gibibytes (2^30 bytes). So your 256 GB hard drive is really 238.4 GiB, which is the size that will be shown by the system. The second thing to remember is you need about 9% free space on an SSD or you'll start getting serious slowdown. So your usable space is really 214.6 GiB. Between those two factors any SSD sold as X GB is really 0.85X GiB usable space. A third thing to consider is the PS4 is always recording your gameplay for streaming and there is no way to turn that off AFAIK, so it holds some percentage of your drive's space for that.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Also I wouldn't 100% count on The Last of Us Part II being a PS4 game. It still has no release date which makes me guess it's not coming out until 2020, at which time we might be entering the next generation of consoles.

[Stefan Payne]

9 hours ago, saif96 said:

do you think the 256GB is enough though?

No

With OS its like 2 Games, if you are lucky. Not worth it.

In General its not worth it, so I'd recommend an external SSD, if you need the access time. Because the advantage of loading times for the exclusives is pretty small anyway.

 

So I'd recommend an external SSD and connect them via USB. The Internal Drive is connected via USB Anyway, so doesn't matter.

And copy the games you want to play right now that also have some long load times to the external SSD.
I wouldn't recommend the other way around and use an Internal SSD and External HDD because of shocks. 

 

And if you want an Internal SSD, you have to go for at least 500GB, 1TB Recommended.

[Stefan Payne]

9 hours ago, saif96 said:

do you think the 256GB is enough though?

As stated, no.

Its around 100GB or so that the PS4 grabs internally.

so you have about half that. 

9 hours ago, chckovsky said:

However - I'm not sure one actually can use an SSD in a PS4. Someone else has to comment on that.

Yes, you can use an SSD in PS3, 4 and XBox One, though its a bit complicated in the XBox One.

Its easiest in the PS3 Super Slim 12GiB Model because it has internal eMMC with the OS and stuff...

9 hours ago, saif96 said:

but its just 4 games? do i really need a 500GB for these 4 only?

4 Games if he's lucky, more like 2, maybe 3.

The PS4 has the same "issue" the PS3 has:
You need about double the space free to install a game. 

ie 80GiB free if the game you want to install is 40GB.

8 hours ago, Skiiwee29 said:

I replaced my 500gb HDD with a 2tb Firecuda SSHD. This would be your best option for price, performance, and storage space on the a PS4. 256gb is not enough.. you would get like 3 games on it, maybe 4. 

I agree, that the SSHD would be the best choice.

However a normal HDD and an external SSD isn't a bad choice either.

 

7 hours ago, WikiForce said:

even ps3 can

Yes, though it makes NO SENSE at all. Thus I replaced the SSD with a HDD again. W/O Much Performance Impact.

One would assume that the performance with an SSD would be amazing on the PS3 - well, it is not. Its barely any faster for whatever reason. Not anything you will notice...

6 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

256 GB isn't much even for just the exclusives. I only buy exclusives on my system and the 500 GB drive it came with isn't enough to keep everything I have on it.

Why don't you replace it with a 1TB Drive? That's like 50€ or so. With Shipping...

I paid 70€ for a ST2000LM007 and it works well so far.

 

6 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

First thing you have to remember is you gotta deduct 7% of the drive's size because hard drives are sold in terms of Gigabytes (10^9 bytes) while your filesystem is measured in terms of Gibibytes (2^30 bytes). So your 256 GB hard drive is really 238.4 GiB, which is the size that will be shown by the system.

You forgot to mention the Space the OS takes for itself (though far less than the XBox One does) 

I haven't tried a 256GiB SSD in the PS4 because mine died a couple of months ago (and possibly took out the Motherboard).

 

But I found that the SSD doesn't give you much benefits in most games. In some it does, yes. But for those you might want to use an external one instead...

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Why don't you replace it with a 1TB Drive? That's like 50€ or so. With Shipping...

I paid 70€ for a ST2000LM007 and it works well so far.

1TB is a waste when 2TB doesn't cost much more, I'll probably put a 2TB in. Too bad there is no 4TB drive that fits in it for the inevitable super cheap PS4 games we should see in a few years on PSN once PS5 starts getting entrenched. I must have paid about $100 for 30 of the top PS3 games on PSN in 2017 (never had a PS3 until 2017).

[PineyCreek]

I'd get 500GB minimum.  Yes, you can install an SSD in a PS4.  As others have pointed out it might be the most cost-effective bang for the money though.  You're going to chew through even that much space fairly fast...there's a reason why you see PS4's ship with 1TB drives now.  Suggest you follow the official support documentation when you do just so you don't miss anything but it's pretty simple.

 

https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/get-help/help-library/system---hardware/storage---data/upgrade-playstation-4-hdd/

 

Keep in mind you'll be loading the PS4 formatting/OS install utility from USB, so have a USB stick on hand.

[B16CXHatch]

I'll be honest with you, even in a Pro which uses SATA 3 (the original and slim use SATA 2), the performance difference isn't massive. Not like in a PC. You shave a few seconds off boot and a few seconds off game loading. But doing a swap from a 1TB HDD to a 250GB class SSD is just pointless. I have both an original PS4 and a Pro. Both have SSDs (500GB Samsung 850 Evo in the original, 1TB Crucial MX500 in the Pro) and honestly without me timing it, I probably wouldn't have really noticed it. The best I saw was Ni No Kuni II. Loading a save saw a 10 second improvement on the Pro with the MX500. I did it primarily for reduction in heat and noise and improvement in reliability (I've had better luck with SSDs over the years).

 

On 7/14/2018 at 5:06 AM, GoldenLag said:

Grab an Crucial MX500 series SSD to save a buck. 

 

If you still want to do it, listen to this guy. For the application, the price premium of the Samsung, especially an 860 Pro, is not worth it. The Crucial MX500 is a considerably better value and a very good drive. I would also recommend going with a 500GB. Though, you can get away with a 250GB class, just expect to be doing some game deleting to install the next. Let's just put it like this. Right now, a 256GB 860 Pro is $117 USD on both Amazon and Newegg while a 500GB MX500 is $110. The MX500 also maintains better ratings than the 860 Pro on both Amazon and Newegg. On a PS4, you will not see a noticeable difference in performance. Save 7 bucks and get a better rated drive with nearly double the storage.

 

Something to consider; PS4s now support external drives. Keep the stock drive in it, and run your SSD as an external. You lose the boot time reduction (which is only a few seconds) but you don't have any of the space being eaten by the OS + it's a lot less work to add an external drive than replace the internal. As long as you have a good enclosure, the speed difference between external USB 3.0 and internal SATA 3 will be negligible, if any.