PS4 Hard Drive Upgrade Guide

by Sohrab Osati | Nov 20, 2013 | 3 comments
Sohrab Osati

The PlayStation 4 ships with a 500GB hard drive which isn’t too bad for the average gamer. However, if you consider yourself a hardcore gamer who plans on purchasing a lot of content and/or are looking to go exclusive with digital downloads, then a 500GB might start to seem smaller. This is especially true when you consider that many AAA PS4 games will near 50GB. Luckily, Sony has once again made upgrading the PS4 hard drive a none issue like the PS3. While maybe not as easy as the PS3, upgrading the hard drive on the PS4 is not an especially hard affair or time consuming. If you’re looking for a more visual guide, our video above takes out the standard PS4 hard drive and upgrades it to a WD Blue 1TB drive while those looking for written steps can find them, after the jump.

PS4 Upgrade Information

If you’re looking to upgrade your PS4 hard drive, you’ll need a few things before getting started. The PS4 uses a standard 2.5 SATA hard drive which most notebooks tend to use that should have a height of 9.5mm or less. Take your pick of manufacturers but in this case, I’ve gone with a WD Blue 1TB for around $75. Larger drives like a 2T or 3TB can also be used. For those itching for extra speed, you can also install a SSD drive which has added benefits like faster read and write times, though, currently, a 1TB SSD drive costs nearly $500. Besides that, prepare a small phillips screwdriver, some muscle strength, and a strong heart because it’s going to seem like you’re about to break your PS4.

Steps:

  1. Place the PS4 flat in front of you with the shiny panel to the left and ensure that the system is completely disconnected from the power.
  2. Apply pressure as you pull off or push off the shiny panel further left, resulting in the entire panel to come off.
  3. Unscrew the larger screw at the bottom left hand corner which contains the PlayStation button symbols. A phillips screwdriver and a bit of muscle is required for this.
  4. With the screw out, pull out the drive towards yourself.
  5. Unscrew the four phillips screws from around the hard drive and pay attention to which way the connecters are pointed.
  6. Screw in new hard drive to metallic enclosure.
  7. Push back into PS4.
  8. Secure larger screw with PlayStation button symbols.
  9. Slide shiny panel back onto PS4 until you hear a pop.

Voila, your PS4 now has a larger hard drive. Keep in mind that if for whatever reason you’re downgrading the PS4 hard drive from the standard 500GB, that you will need at least a 160GB in the machine. With the new drive in, you’re not out of the woods yet. You’ll now need to install the latest PS4 system update which can be downloaded on a USB drive. Go ahead and read through our previous PS4 System Update 1.5 article for how to download the latest update to a flash drive. For those who will be reading through this in the future, keep in mind that the process will be the same, no matter the system update number.

With the update on a flash drive:

  1. Plug flash drive into PS4 USB port.
  2. Plug PS4 into power.
  3. Start PS4 in Safe Mode. To do this:
    1. While fully off, hold down power button for 7 seconds.
  4. From the options menu, select “Update System Software.”
  5. Follow onscreen steps to finish installation.

If you’ve already downloaded the PS4 system update onto a USB drive, the over all process should take less than 10 minutes to complete.

Discuss:

Will you be sticking to the standard 500GB PS4 hard drive or will you be upgrading?