The PlayStation 5 comes with a lot of cool features, including 120Hz gaming support, as well as the new DualSense controller with its adaptive triggers. However, the console only comes with a relatively small 825 GB SSD. This means that you will have a hard time installing many games on your console. Fortunately, you can at least install your PS4 games on an external hard drive and play them on your PS5. So, here is how to install games on an external hard drive in PlayStation 5.
Use External Hard Drive to Play PS4 Games on PS5
Since all next-gen games use the PlayStation 5’s high-speed SSD, you can’t transfer them to external storage. However, you can play many PS4 games on your new console. You can easily install these games on external hard drives or external SSDs on PlayStation 5 to save space on your console’s extremely limited SSD.
In this article, we are going to discuss how you can use an external hard drive to store your PS4 games and play them on the PS5. We’ll also discuss how you can automatically install PS4 games to your hard drive, and everything you need to know about using removable storage for PS4 games.
As always, you can use the table of contents below to jump to any section of this article.
Format external hard drive to store PS4 games
If you’re connecting a new hard drive to store PS4 games, you’ll need to format it with your console first. Here’s how you can do that.
- Connect your external hard drive or SSD to the PS5 console.
- Go to Settings -> Storage.
- Select “Extended Storage”, then navigate to “Format as Extended Storage”.
- Click “Yes” on the warning screen that appears.
Your external hard drive will be formatted as extended storage for your console, and you can store PS4 games on your hard drive.
Enable/Disable Installing Games to Extended Storage
Once you set up an extended storage device for your PlayStation, it will, by default, install new PS4 games to extended storage. This way, you don’t have to worry about last-gen games taking up valuable space on your SSD. However, if you don’t want this feature, you can also disable it easily.
- Go to Settings -> Storage.
- Select “Extended Storage” and turn off the toggle next to “Always install PS4 games to extended storage”.
New PS4 games you now install on your PS5 will not automatically save to your external hard drive. Instead, they will be installed on your PS5’s internal SSD.
Eject or disconnect external hard drive from PS5
Now most of the time I think you probably remove your external hard drives from your PS5 by removing the cable from the port. This is not recommended and may cause data loss, and it may even corrupt your hard drive. So here’s how you can disconnect and eject an external hard drive from your PS5 in order to plug it out of your console.
- Go to Settings -> Storage.
- Select “Extended Storage” and click “Safely Remove from PS5”
You can then remove your external hard drive from your PlayStation 5 without worrying about data loss or corruption.
Save storage space by moving PS4 games to external storage
Space is limited on the PlayStation 5 SSD. Also, until Sony releases the list of SSDs that can be used to expand storage space on the console, there is virtually no way to save space. get more storage on your console. So it’s a very nice feature to have at least your PS4 games stored on an external hard drive or SSD to save space on your PS5’s SSD. Well, are you going to start installing PS4 games on an external hard drive? Let us know in the comments.
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