You Can Use a USB Drive to Save and Transfer Games to PlayStation 5
The most optimistic estimate is that the PlayStation 5 offers 667GB of space for your games out of the box, once all the core operating system files are taken into account. This is a fairly large amount of memory, but then again, modern games take up quite a lot of space, often easily taking up tens or even hundreds of gigabytes per game.
You can continue to rotate between the games installed on your PS5, but this will require a lot of re-downloads. To save time and bandwidth, you can also connect an external drive to one of the USB-A or USB-C ports on your console and store your games there. You’ll still have to move them to internal memory if you want to play them, but it’s much faster than waiting for them to download.
Old games made for PS4 will run directly from external storage as they are less demanding on system resources, so this is also a good way to transfer games from your old console.
Selecting an external drive for PlayStation 5
Before we get to external drives, the PS5 also has an internal SSD slot that you can use to add additional storage: it will act just like the built-in storage, and you can run PS5 games from it, although you’ll have to do it. use the screwdriver and open the console. However, this is quite a complex process; Sony has a detailed guide here .
External drives are an easier option, and most models that can connect via USB will do the job, either powered by a separate power adapter or powered by the USB port on your console. Both SSDs and more traditional hard drives will work, although the former will be faster (and cost more). More space is of course better, but again, it’s more expensive. If you want, you can even use a USB drive.
Sony has some minimum requirements for drives: they must support SuperSpeed USB 5 Gbps or later, and have a capacity of at least 250 GB and no more than 8 TB. This doesn’t rule out the possibility of using many external drives, but it’s worth double-checking before purchasing or using an old drive. Also note that you can’t connect the drive via a USB hub – it must be connected directly to the PS5.
You can use any USB port on PlayStation 5 to connect external storage, except the front USB-A port. Sony recommends a USB-C port on the front of the console, but you can also use USB-A ports on the back if you prefer—this will largely depend on how you position and configure the console.
Using an external drive on Sony PlayStation 5
Plug your chosen external drive into one of the PS5’s eligible ports and you’ll first have to format it to get it ready – this will erase everything already on the drive. Open Settings using the gear icon at the top of the home screen, then select Storage & Extended USB Storage , and then select Format as Extended USB Storage .
When this is done, you will see a message stating that all PS4 games you download from now on will be stored on your external drive by default and you can launch them from there. You can optionally move PS4 games back and forth between internal and external storage (this is the only option for PS5 games): To change this, select Install Location from the Storage screen.
You can now switch between console storage and extended USB storage and see what games and apps are installed on each, as well as how much free space is available in each location. The USB Extended Storage section also includes a “Safely Remove from PS5” option, which should be used to remove the drive without risk of data loss or corruption.
To move games or apps between two locations, select Games & Apps under Console Storage or Extended USB Storage . Select any item, then choose Select Items to Move – you can select more games and apps, or just keep the one you originally selected and then use the Move option to send the selection to another drive. By default, the games and apps you haven’t used for the longest time are listed at the top, giving you some idea of what you might want to remove from your internal storage.