Besides a short cable that comes in the box, this is a hard drive that's longing to be displayed well next to your console. No matter if you're using it for PS4 or PS5, this is an HDD that's worthy of a place on your TV stand. Of course, the other con besides a shorter cable is that this is yet another limited edition Seagate game drive that's HDD, not SSD. As external SSDs come down in price, we really hope this is the last time Seagate forces HDD on us. Below, we’ve explained how expanding your PS5 storage works and then listed our favourite external hard drives for Sony’s latest console. Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands) may take longer to reach you. Yet the best reason to pay the extra is the performance. On paper, the Toshiba Canvio Gaming has faster sequential read/write speeds, but the FireCuda isn’t far behind, and it actually outpaces the Toshiba when it comes to copying games, loading games and loading saved games, by 3 seconds in The Last of Us Part II and 5 seconds in God of War. Given that the Canvia Gaming is one of the fastest gaming HDDs we’ve tested, that’s an impressive result. Come for the styling, stay for the speeds.

When it comes to running games on PS4, it’s actually the fastest HDD we’ve tested. In A-B tests with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive, it shaved 12 seconds off the time it took to load The Last of Us Part II, and 13 seconds off loading a saved game. Differences in other titles aren’t so noticeable – we’re talking just a second or two with Resident Evil 2 – but this is a great HDD if you want your PS4 library close to hand, or want to make the most of PS+ Extra. You can only have one extended storage drive connected to your PS4, so you really want the biggest drive you can afford. Games these days can eat up vast amounts of storage space, so unless you’re exclusively planning on playing Fortnite or Minecraft, you’re going to need a large external drive.Beyond that, this is a well-built drive with a tough anodized aluminium casing, and it even comes with both a USB Type-C cable and Type-A adapter bundled in. You don’t need to spend more on an SSD for your PS4, and the pricing is nearly in HDD territory. We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the PS5. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive. The other reason to pay extra is that its performance is very good. The Toshiba Canvio Flex is a little faster, particularly when it comes to sequential read/write speeds, but the FireCuda isn’t far behind – and it outpaces most other rivals when it comes to loading games and saved games, albeit only by a couple of seconds in some titles. Its transfer times are also competitive when you’re copying games to and from the internal HDD. If you like the styling, this drive won’t let you down when it comes to performance.

We've seen a few brilliant Seagate limited edition game drives in our time, but this God of War Ragnarok one might be the prettiest yet. The best PS4 external hard drives might give you better load times than the standard console HDD - especially since portable SSDs are getting cheaper. In truth, there are a million reasons why an external hard drive can come in handy, but with gaming on PS4 at this stage, it'll either help you move game data around, increase storage, or transfer screenshots and the like from console to computer. No matter your reason for looking, the list of external HDDs and SSDs down below will set you on the right path. The best external hard drives for PS4 1. Toshiba Canvio Flex: Best all-round external hard drive for PS4 We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the PS4 or PS4 Pro. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive. It comes with a USB-C port into the drive but this can be implemented as a USB-A or USB-C connection depending on what device you're using it on. In our testing, we got the same speeds through either port so it shouldn't matter which you have free or available, or if you change the device it's used with during its lifetime. There's a small but clear LED indicator on one of the short ends which is always a help, but one small downside is that it does get a little warm when in use so it'll pay to keep that in mind when positioning it.

Keep playing your PS4 favourites and archive your PS5 hits with our pick of the best USB hard drives and SSDs for PlayStation 5

Now is the time to swap an SSD into your PS4 Pro. With the price of SSDs constantly tumbling, thanks to a vibrant PC market, drives like the brilliant Samsung EVO 860 are now affordable and easy to use. When it comes to SSDs, the EVO series has long been the gold standard, and the 860 EVO replaces the 850 series, thanks to superior performance and more modern design and parts. It's actually cheaper than most 850s now too.

There aren't any specific types of external hard drive you'll need to use with the PS4. Any USB 3.0 HDD or SSD will work, and capacity shouldn't be an issue either. Although, it's worth noting that you will need to format whatever drive you get to make it compatible with the PS4's software and storage type. Once you do format a drive to this type, you most likely won't be able to use it for any other purpose, which is a bit of a shame. Are PS4 external hard drives worth it? With twice as much capacity as a similarly-priced SSD, the 2TB and 4TB versions will give you enough room to hold a sizable game library too. Unless every second counts, this drive is a great addition to your PS5 setup. The design and build are as you'd expect from Seagate: robust,solid, and compact. The looks, however, are truly next level. The colour scheme is on point for Ragnarok's branding, and match the limited edition controller beautifully. Meanwhile the intertwined patterning on the edges is a really nice finish. Topping all that off is some tasteful RGB on the front edge which shines out a gentle blue when plugged in.Right now, there are only two reasons to choose a desktop external hard drive. First, they can run to larger capacities: even the biggest portable drives max out at 5TB, while desktop drives go up to the full 8TB maximum capacity. You’d have to have a massive games library, though, to make that a deciding factor. Otherwise, some desktop drives have a 7,200RPM spindle speed, where portable drives usually only manage 5,400RPM. This can mean slightly better performance, and slightly shorter loading times. You may not realise it, but purchasing the best external hard drive for your PS5 can really make a difference to your PlayStation experience. Despite its awesome power, the PS5’s storage space can be a real cause for concern; even with just a handful of PlayStation 5 games installed and a few PS4 classics, you can soon find yourself running out of space.

With games this big, it makes sense to expand your PS5’s storage capabilities with an external hard drive. Unfortunately, since external drives are too slow to run PS5 games, you can only store titles on them rather than play games from there directly – for that you’ll need to install a compatible NVMe SSD. Instead, what external drives are great for is housing an extensive library of PS4 games as these can be played without a hitch. This avoids taking up valuable PS5 storage with games that don’t need to be there. Whilst we will do everything we can to meet the delivery times above, there may be factors outside of our control and we cannot guarantee delivery within this time frame. Demonstrating this clearly is the fact that you can get a 1TB X6 for a similar price of SSDs with less than half of the storage. The Crucial X6 is fantastic for storing and playing PS4 games and will ensure you have the speediest of file transfers, loads, and games at your fingertips. A big benefit is that of getting a PS4 external hard drive that's likely faster than your PS4's internal one, and this will also be a drive that will go incredibly well with the new-gen PS5 console when and if folks upgrade. Read and write speeds were great in testing. The 2000MB/s speed you see on the box is as good as you'll get in an external hard drive, but in reality, it translates to some great load times and transfer speeds on PS5 and PC. For instance, I had a load of game capture footage stored on my PS5 I had been meaning to move across to my computer for video editing, and even though it was about 30 clips spanning a total of 22GB, the P40 swallowed it up from the PS5 in about a minute. The same was true of games once I formatted the drive for some extra storage. I transferred three games that added up to 18GB, and it moved across in just shy of a minute.

The best way to narrow down your selection is to decide on how much capacity you need – naturally, the bigger the better generally applies, and getting the largest space for the lowest price should be your goal. Next, you need to work out if you'd prefer an SSD or an HDD. If you didn't know already, even the fastest HDD is massively outperformed by the speed of an SSD. If you know for a fact you're in the market for one, we've collated a more specific list of the best PS4 SSDs for folks who want to modify their console into a PS4.5. When loading PS4 games and their saves, the Canvio Gaming still can’t keep up with the SSDs, but we’re talking about 31.4 seconds to launch God of War rather than 26 to 28 seconds – hardly a night and day distinction – while the time to load save games is in the same ballpark as the slower SSDs. However, where other drives with a similar spec have been overpriced, the P50 isn’t hugely more expensive than the T7 or its 1TB rivals, so you might find the reduction in transfer speeds makes buying it worthwhile. It’s also a well-built, stylish effort that looks good next to your Sony system. If you don’t mind spending a little extra, this is the best PS5 external drive. If your PS4 is anything like ours, it's probably getting louder with every boot. A bit of expanded storage never goes amiss, but in particular, that launch model's 500GB of HDD won't fit many contemporary games. While you might not be able to get the performance we've come to know from the best SSDs for gaming, or even the best PS5 SSDs, there are plenty of great PS4 options that will work.