How to Upgrade Your PS4 Hard Drive
Games take up a lot of memory these days, with digital copies and updates making certain titles over 50 GB entirely on their own. As such, you’ll want to have as much storage as possible on your PS4, and one way to do that is by upgrading your internal hard drive.
Now before you go through the process keep in mind that the PS4 is compatible with external hard drives, which you can use to install apps on. All you need to do for that is plug the USB into the front of your console and format the hard drive. If you want to upgrade the hard drive inside of your system it’s going to take a bit of time, although it honestly isn’t too complicated.
First things first: you’ll need to purchase a new HDD and make sure it’s compatible with your PS4. Amazon has a whole selection of hard drives you can choose from and Seagate is a good option to go with. For whichever hard drive you choose, look through product information and find a note about it being compatible with PS4,
There’s four main steps involved with this. We’ll walk you through the process, but if you’d rather watch a video there’s some helpful tutorials on the PlayStation site or on YouTube by users like AFatBunny, which we’ll embed down below as well.
1. Back up saved data for games
2. Replace your HDD
3. Reinstall System Software
4. Restore your data
Once you have your hard drive you’ll need to get a few things. This includes a long Phillips screwdriver, a flash drive or USB storage device (of at least 32 GB), and a PC. Make sure your PS4 is completely updated with its version before you do anything.
The first step is to back up your saved data from games. To do this go connect your USB device to your PS4 then go to Settings > Application > Saved Data Management > Saved Data in System Storage > Copy to USB Storage Device. Select a title, then press X to add a check next to the save data you want to copy. Rinse and repeat for all the data you want to carry over.
Now completely power off your PS4 and unplug it, then place it in front of you on a flat surface that you can work on (preferably a hard surface). Look at the panel on the left side and push it down gently to slide it off the system to the left. You’ll see the slot for the hard drive in front of your system, so use the screwdriver to remove the large screw on top.
Now pull out the hard drive from the slot and you’ll see a mounting bracket. Undo the four small screws and remove the hard drive. Place your new hard drive into the bracket and place the screws back into it – just make sure not to tighten them too tightly. Insert the mounting bracket and hard drive all the way back into the slot, then replace the screw on the top (again, not too tightly). Put the panel back on and plug your PS4 in.
Now you’re going to need a USB device with at least 1 GB of free space. You need to reinstall the system software for your PS4, so head to the page with the latest software version on PlayStation’s official website and download the update. That same page has instructions for how to install the update through a USB device, so follow those and get your PS4 updated.
After that all you need to do is copy your saved data back onto your system, but keep in mind that you’ll first need to log into the same PSN account you used when you first copied it. To do this just connect your USB device with your saved data, then follow a similar series of steps as before.
Go to Settings > Application Saved Data Management > Saved Data on USB Storage Device > Copy to System Storage. Then select a title, press X to put a check next to the box of the data you want to copy, then select copy. Again, rinse and repeat for everything you want to copy. Keep in mind that any installed data required for your games will have to be done again, but if you’ve upgraded your hard drive it should go by a bit faster this time.
That’s all you need to know about upgrading your PS4 hard drive. For more guides and walkthroughs make sure to search for Twinfinite.
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