How to upgrade PS4 external storage

Thundyrkatz

I tried googling this, but I can't find anything other than how to use an external drive to begin with. Hoping you smart people can help me!

I have a PS4 and am currently using an external USB drive with 2 TB storage that is mostly full now. So I need to upgrade to a bigger drive.

How can i move the data from my existing 2TB drive to a larger drive? Looks like I can't have 2 active external drives on the PS4. Can I plug the drives into a computer and just swap everything over? Has anyone done this? I do not want to have 2 separate drives with some games here and some games there.

Thank you for any advice!

zepherin

I also would like to know this.

deathnote666

Make sure everything is backed up in a way that can be transferred to the new PS4.

Make sure the internal 2.5 inch 2tb hdd meets the physical dimensions.

Download a copy of the firmware and put it on a thumbdrive.

Boot from the tumbdrive and install the firmware on the new hdd.

Instructions: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps4-upgrade-hdd/

Thundyrkatz

Thank you @deathnote666 It looks like there is no way to do this with an external drive. I have a 2TB external drive that is 85% full and I am looking to upgrade to a larger drive, like a 4TB external drive. However there does not seem to be any way to move all the games from one external drive to another. Maybe its a piracy protection measure?

Your suggestion is appreciated, but the vast majority of my games are on the external drive and the internal drive is too small to act as a mid point.

Looks like I am going to end up having some games on one drive and newer games on the newer drive, which is inconvenient. The good news is that you can plug both drives in and switch between them, so at the very least I wont have to get up and physically swap the drives back and forth. Small win I guess.

Burtletoy

Can you not just redownload all the old games on to the new drive? Or do you have download caps on your Internet or something?

deathnote666

I don't know what the copyright limits on copying things off of the PS4 are so I can't confirm the best method.

I upgraded to 2tb right out of the box and followed the directions in the link so I didn't copy things around.

My home internet is 3mbs download and has a data cap so It would take weeks to re-download everything myself.

Thundyrkatz

Thanks for the suggestions! I have the 2TB drive, and its almost full at this point. Was trying to go to a 4TB drive.

The idea of redownloading the games is an interesting one, I had not considered doing that. Are the save files located on the PS4 and the game data on the external storage? I suppose I could try the redownload and see what happens. I don't have to delete anything from the old drive first....

CrimeRobot

When I upgraded from 2gb to 4gb external, I freed up some internal storage to serve as an intermediary drive, i.e. copy from old external to internal, swap drives and copy from internal to new external. think that's basically the only option short of deleting and redownloading everything.

Save files are saved internally even if you delete games, so you shouldn't have to worry about that.

Burtletoy

Yeah, deleting a game generally does not delete your save file. I know with ps4 file management, the save files are in a different category view than the games, and all your save files combined are probably smaller than any single game