If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt accumulated a large number of games throughout the previous (still kind of weird to say that) console generation. I had a launch PlayStation 4, which only had a 500GB hard drive, and then upgraded to the PlayStation 4 Pro with 1TB. Even physical, disc-based games required massive installs and updates, so I constantly found myself running out of space. I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase an external drive to use, and I sure am happy that I did.
I bought the 5TB WD_Black Game Drive, which hovers around the $150 mark but can often be found discounted. No longer will I have to delete and re-install games as I acquired new ones. This became particularly tricky with multiplayer games that friends and I would fall in and out of. Once in a while, someone would want to play something and then the rest of us had to wait hours to download it again. I currently have over 100 games installed on the drive, a mix of physical and digital, so it has room for plenty.
I was initially worried that the performance would be slower than running games off the internal drive, but I was wrong. Performance is not an issue at all. Loading times are on par with what I am used to. And it makes it super easy to attach the drive to any of my PlayStation 4+ consoles to access my game library, PS4, PS4 Pro, and now my PlayStation 5.
While this isn’t an exhaustive or technical review, I did want to share my opinion. If you’ve been on the fence about buying an external drive or worried about the performance, I say just go for it. It has been a worthwhile investment and definitely one of the most useful PlayStation accessories I own.
And while I didn’t test it with my Xbox One (I don’t have that many games for the platform), I’m sure the performance characteristics are similar and would be just as worthwhile. Do you have the drive and an Xbox One? Let me know about your experiences with it.