PS4: Connect an external hard drive - how it works

If you wanted to connect an external hard drive to your PS4, it was not so easy so far. We show you which types of memory expansion are now possible.

Connect an external hard drive to the PS4

Since March 2017, you can connect an external hard drive to the PS4. You can also save games and apps outside of the PS4. To do this, you must carry out the firmware update to version 4.50.
Hard drives with USB 3.0 are accepted, which have at least a write and read speed of 40 Mbps. The minimum size is 250 GB, the maximum size is 8 TB.
Simply connect the external hard drive to the PS4 using a USB cable and start both devices. In the "Settings" you can select the "USB storage devices" under the category "Devices". Here you can now format the external hard disk as "extended memory". All data on the external hard drive will be deleted.
Tip: If you would like to disconnect the external hard drive from the PS4, first press the PlayStation button on the controller. Under "Sound / Devices" select the option "Stop using the extended memory" to avoid data loss.

The hard drive of a PlayStation 4 holds 500 gigabytes. That sounds like a lot, but one or the other game requires up to 50 gigabytes.
Until March, no external hard drive could be connected to the PS4. The copy protection of the games has been bypassed on the PS3, which Sony now wants to prevent.

Tip: You can also simply replace the internal hard drive. In our CHIP article you will learn how to replace the built-in hard drive with a hard drive with 1 TB of memory.
If you want to play the music files from your external hard drive on the PlayStation 4, simply transfer them to a USB stick. With these instructions you can play the songs.