PS5 external USB drive options to make full use of the latest 2021 console update, Digital News

PUBLISHED ONApril 15, 2021 4:02 AMByYonk

So you’ve already run out of internal SSD storage space on your PS5, or about to run out, and constantly flustered about which games to delete to free up space for new games.

The good news is, Sony is finally rolling out a major update (today!) for the PlayStation 5 to enable users to transfer their PS5 games to an external drive connected via USB.

PlayStation 5’s PCIe slot

It’s a bummer that PS5 games can’t be run off the extended external storage, and this is where you’ll need to buy a compatible NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 Internal SSD to fill up that internal slot. The good news is, Sony is expected to finally enable the slot for usage this Summer.

So far, only Western Digital has officially announced a “PS5 compatible” SSD, the WD_Black SN 850 NVMe SSD which comes in 500GB (US$149.99) (S$201), 1TB (US$229.99) and 2TB (US$449.99) capacities.

It sports a read performance of 7,000 MB/s and write performance of 5,100 MB/s, which is good enough for the PS5.

Portable External SSD Options

If you’ve already run out of internal SSD storage space on your PS5, it might be high time to invest in a couple of portable external SSDs to:

Store your PS4 games, which you can still run them directly off the external drives.
Store or archive your PS5 games, and only move them back into your internal SSDs when you intend to play them. This saves you the trouble of having to re-download them if you had to delete them to free up the internal storage space. It also helps that you are using a USB 3.0-capable external SSD, which makes a world of a difference when reading/writing files.

Below are a selection of recommended portable external SSDs that are currently available on the market: