The 10 Best External Hard Drives for PS5
The 10 Best External Hard Drives for PS5
The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is one of the best game consoles available right now. Capable of playing the latest games at stunning resolutions and frame rates, the PS5 shows users what next-gen gaming has to offer.
Unfortunately, it also shows how much storage space next-gen games need, with popular titles like Red Dead Redemption II and NBA 2K21 taking up at least 100GB of storage space. While the PS5’s 667GB of usable internal storage may sound like a lot, a handful of these big new titles can easily take up all of its storage space.
Luckily, there are a few options to expand your PS5 storage space. One of the simplest methods is with a great external hard drive.
Best External Hard Drives for PS5
- Best Overall: Samsung SSD T7
- Best Premium: WD Black P50 Game Drive
- Best Budget: WD 1TB Elements SE Portable SSD
- Game-Ready: WD Black D30 Game Drive
- A Rugged SSD: SanDisk Extreme Portable
- A Rugged HDD: G-Technology ArmorAtd
- For Massive SSD Storage: Crucial X8 2TB Portable
- For Massive HDD Storage: Seagate Portable 4TB Hard Drive
- Palm-Sized Storage: OWC Envoy Pro Elektron
- For RGB Fans: Seagate Firecuda Gaming
What to Consider
When picking the best external storage drive for your PS5, it’s best to keep a few things in mind.
First, the PS5 cannot play PS5 games that are stored on an external storage drive. While external drives work great for storage, any PS5 game you want to actively play needs to be stored on the internal storage drive. The PS5 can, however, play PS4 games stored on an external drive.
Second, there are a ton of different kinds of external storage drives to choose from, but we highly recommend using a solid state drive (SSD). Especially if you plan on playing PS4 games stored on your external drive, a fast SSD will offer a much better playing experience than older, cheaper hard disk drives (HDD).
How We Selected
Many of these recommendations are based on our personal use of these products. For the products we couldn’t test ourselves, we performed intensive research, reviewing content from expert sources like Wirecutter, The Verge, CNET, Tom’s Guide, and DigitalTrends, among others, as well as thousands of consumer reviews from online storefronts like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. As for the products themselves, we evaluated them on performance, design, build quality, and price.
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A good PS5 hard drive can give you enough storage space to play all your favorite games. These are our top picks for the best external hard drives for PS5.