. One of the best solutions we strongly recommend for PS4 users is to use an external hard drive to second the current internal hard drive in holding the loads of downloaded games and movies you decided to keep handy and are not ready to waive. That’s because the stock hard drive cannot handle many heavyweight AAA-grade PS4 games that come with around 40GB or even 50GB file size, let alone the UHD movies, even with the new release of PS4 that ships with 1TB hard drive capacity. In our We have suggested a few solutions to work around this problem, one of them is to use an external hard drive for the purpose of backup, with which you can alleviate the burden on the internal hard drive and give more space for the new downloaded files.
Pick any budget PS4 HDD below. WD My Passport 4TB. Is compatible with Windows and Mac and comes pre-formatted for windows or you have to mention if you want Mac. Save mac compatible external hard drive to get e-mail alerts and updates on your eBay. 48 product ratings - 1TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive Ultra Slim Xbox one/PS4/Mac/Windows. Top Rated Plus. Sellers with highest buyer ratings. New WD My Passport For Mac 1TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive.
But using an external hard drive with PS4 requires you to format the drive with the relevant file system in order to be able to use it properly with PS4, and below is a step-by-step guide to how to do that. There are two ways to format the external hard drive to work properly with PS4 depending on the purpose you want to use the external hard drive for on PS4. Please determine your purpose then read one of the two guides below. Whether you’re formatting an internal drive, external drive, USB flash drive, or SD card, Windows will give you the choice of NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. But PS4 only supports two of these file systems—FAT32 and exFAT.
FAT32 is an older file system that’s largely relegated to USB flash drives and other external drives. Windows uses NTFS for its system drive, and it’s also ideal for other internal drives. ExFAT is a modern replacement for FAT32, and more devices support it than do NTFS — although it’s not as widespread as FAT32. FAT32 File System FAT32 was first introduced all the way back in Windows 95 to replace the older FAT16 file system promoting new major improvements and breaking the limitations of FAT16. When compared to exFAT which was first introduced in 2006, FAT32 is too old, and because of its long age it’s the defacto standard. Flash drives you purchase will often come formatted with FAT32 for maximum compatibility across not just modern computers, but other devices like game consoles (including PS4) and anything with a USB port.
Limitation of FAT32 with PS4 When considering using an external hard drive for PS4, the most significant problem with FAT32 is the maximum file size it allows. Individual files on a FAT32 drive can’t be over 4GB in size — that’s the maximum! That means if you have a single game file which size is larger than 4GB, it cannot, by any means, be saved on a drive that’s formatted with FAT32, whether it’s an external or internal drive. That makes FAT32 unsuitable for use on external hard drives dedicated for PS4 because a modern standard PS4 game comes with much larger than 4GB file size.
But what about exFAT? ExFAT File System exFAT’s debut was in 2006, and older versions of Windows (particularly Windows Vista and Windows XP) where given the support for that file system via update patches. This certain file system is optimized primarily for flash drives. It’s designed to be a lightweight file system like FAT32 without all NTFS’s extra features and overhead, but without FAT32’s limitations. Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits (Maximum 16EB. That’s too much to even just imagine!). This indicates you can store an AAA-grade PS4 game with 50GB apiece or even larger without any hassle if your external hard drive is formatted with exFAT.
ExFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits. That’s why we only recommend exFAT for PS4 external hard drives, nothing else. For more information on the difference between FAT32 and exFAT, please visit. Formatting an External Hard Drive for PS4 The process of formatting the external hard drive for PS4 is very easy and can be done in a very few steps.
You’ll only need a computer (desktop or laptop, doesn’t matter) then format it from there. We’ll explain this method using Microsoft Windows 8 operating system. Attach the external hard drive to your computer. Open Disk Management. In Windows 8 this can be achieved by moving the mouse to the bottom-left corner of the Desktop and right-clicking on top of the Start menu screen. From the menu, click on Disk Management.
The New Simple Volume Wizard will appear. Click on Next. Leave the size of the volume to be the maximum disk space so it has only one volume.
Click on Next. Assign a drive letter for the drive to have once the process is at an end. Windows will automatically assign one, but this may be changed if so desired.
When ready, click on Next. In the Format Partition section, select the File System to be exFAT and change the Volume Label to a desired name for the drive. Make sure the Perform a quick format check-box is highlighted, and when ready click on Next. The Wizard will display a summary of the selected settings for review. It is important to know that formatting and partitioning the drive will erase all data that is on the drive. If there’s no needed information within the drive, then click on Partition. If there is data on the drive that is needed or is not backed up, it will need to be copied to another location before proceeding.
If ready, click on Finish. The drive will indicate that it’s Formatting for a few seconds, and once done, it will display as a Healthy (Primary Partition), and the drive will be available in the Computer area of Windows under the assigned drive letter. You’ll have now an external hard drive companion for your PS4 that can store the largest individual game file size you can ever imagine in mind.
Bought this and split into 4 partitions, one for time machine (mas os sierra) to backup my macbook pro and the other partitions for other stuff. I generally do not recommend using a drive in this manner, by this i mean using it as a backup drive for important data and for other general stuff, however i do have another hard drive purely for backups. It looks good, feels good to hold although it's a fingerprint magnet and i find it quiet which is nice considering it's a mechanical hdd.
I do not take mine out so cannot comment on how well it would withstand being knocked about in a back pack or something similar although one should buy a decent case if taking out anyway considering it will hold you're data on it. I cannot comment on the software that's included as i just format and partition my hard drives and never use the included software. Bear in mind the cable is very short so some may wish to order a longer cable when purchasing and maybe a case.
I've never tested the hard drive read and write speeds when i received it but it backs up my mac very quickly and copying to and from the hdd is quick enough for me so not needed to. It has a USB 3.0 port which incase you are not sure is backward compatible with USB 2.0, just remember if you only have a USB 2.0 port you will be restricted to USB 2.0 speeds. Hopefully it will last as not had the best experience with portable HDDs from various companies including WD, i don't take them out, they only get plugged in generally when backing up so they don't get used much at all, however i do recommend this portable hdd as so far it's been very good. This piece of. Failed after being lightly used, and I do mean lightly used.
This was used about 5 times in 1 year as a backup drive. Before the drive stopped working the connecting pins were moving slightly, the cable was wiggling and making a snapping noise. I imagine if it did not fail on me it would have probably broke anyhow due to the connecting piece coming off as other have mentioned. My other WD drives never had any issues.
One thing to bear in mind is that in transit some of these drives can get dropped. I would suggest that you do a full test on any purchased drive as soon as received. I have now purchased about £300 worth of drives (from Amazon of course) that will be used as backups to my backups. I know, but the data on them is a lot more valuable. Bear in mind that all drive manufacturers will tell you that they can retrieve the data, however this will be at a cost to yourself from around £300 to £500 per drive. Purchasing a 4TB+ backup drive for your backups is a small price to pay.
As a replacement for this drive I went with the WD Elements and Toshiba as they seem to be a lot more reliable than the passports. I have an original 500GB PS4 which I was intending to upgrade to a PS4 pro until I heard rumours about a PS5 milling around. The last rumour I heard was it was a 2020 speculated release.
With it being the latter half of 2018 at time of writing I didn't see the point in buying another PS4. It's a lot of money for an arguably short amount of time (potentially).
I was however annoyed with having only 5 of the 20 odd games I bought on the HDD at any one time. It was frustrating if a friend wanted to play a game I didn't have on the console at the time. Plus in one of the Sony Sales I bought a couple of digital games. Though lazy I have found digital games so much more accessible as I just drop one for the other in seconds without moving (a 1st world entitlement issue for sure) So I decided that going forward I would buy Digital only games, they are more expensive new, but cheap in sales, so much easier to play with a 2 second attention span like mine.
So with the setup story out of the way, I researched all around the place and found 4 reviews I trusted online of which they all advised NOT to get a solid state drive or SSD as they are more expensive for less space and the PS4 has an internal Bus speed limitation, which essentially leads to a fast drive being slowed to USB speeds any way. So of the large space HDD this was either in top place or second across the 4 reviews. Placing top 2 4 times seemed like a good sign. Bought it, plugged it in, formatted it to PS4 file system (must do this in order to use it as extended storage) and transferred all my games to the drive. It all worked out fine, the transfer was slow but when you are transferring 500GB and then installing another 1000GB from other games it will take a while.
Had 0 issues so far, games load in good time, I don't have any issues in game with speeds, frame rates or anything. I wouldn't notice the difference between the external and the internal drive. The key thing is I have the space to have my entire collection of games on there, including all my PS+ free games, plus demos and such and I still have a tonne of room.
If the PS5 (is any good) supports HDD expansion in the same way the PS4 does then I can either wipe all the PS4 games off (if they are not compatible with the PS5) or keep them and swap it between consoles (assuming they use the same file system) Either way I am sure my HDD will be useful for years to come either on my PS4 or any future console I purchase (as this will work with Microsoft's products) or if worse comes to worse I can re-format in a FAT file system and use it as storage for my computer files. I'm a fan of WD products and this drive is brilliant so far, it's doing the job I bought it for incredibly well and I am enjoying bouncing from game to game as I get bored of one, moving on to the other. 3TB version The drive didn't appear on my Windows 10 laptop when plugged in. Rebooted, looked in Device Manager etc., nothing. Searched for a solution online and found the usual references to updating drivers etc.
You shouldn't need to do this however and seeing as my earlier WD drives work just fine I decided to try the simple solution, use the USB cable from another disk. Now it works just fine.
Is it worth sending the whole thing back? Probably not. I have had other WD USB disk drives with no problems, so I'm not expecting any with this one now it's connected OK. No problems with noise or vibration. Been a student i use this portable hard drive in order to store all of my files on so it can be used on different computers around college and at home. I have also used several other WD My Passport drives in order to backup my computers and other family members and have never had any problems with them.
For someone like me who travels with the drive a-lot i would definitely recommend purchasing a case in order to carry the drive in do it does not get damaged or the proprietary had that is used with all portable hard drives is lost. If i ever needed to i would never have any hesitation to purchasing another WD had drive or any other of their products.
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The drive works straight out of the box for windows users but if you want to be able to use the drive on both MAC and Windows then you need to reformat it to the EXFAT drive format, there is clear instruction of how this is done on WD's website. Their is also software included for setting up your my passport drive to backup your computer.
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