The PS5's small SSD isn't a problem yet — and that's impressive

When the PS5 was unveiled last summer, alarm bells started ringing when it was announced that the base console would include just 825GB of internal storage infinite.

When you consider that this translates to a mere 667GB of usable memory — later the Os and vital systems have taken their portion — and that information technology's not uncommon for major games to crave an install of more than than 100GB, a hard bulldoze of this size really seemed unlikely to cut information technology.

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My concerns were compounded by the hard drive headaches I experienced with my 1TB PS4 Pro. I regularly faced difficult decisions nearly which games to delete off my organisation in order to make room for a new release. The fact the PS5 was going to have an even smaller drive out of the box had me frustrated before I'd even got the panel under my television.

All the same for all my pre-release worries, I've had a remarkable smooth experience with the PS5 in terms of its hard drive size in my six months of ownership. This week was the first time since launch that I tried to install a game and was told "difficult drive full" and even and then freeing upwards some space was a super unproblematic procedure.

Thank you to the PS5'southward super-speedy SSD and the smart tricks it allows game developers to pull, I've barely noticed that the PS5, at least on newspaper, has a pretty small hard drive past modern standards.

Pinch to the rescue

Our start insight into the PS5 came from a deep dive presentation given past Sony'south Mark Cerny in March 2020. During this relatively dry out showcase of the console's architect, Cerny explained the tech behind the side by side-gen PlayStation, expanding on its key features.

He spoke at groovy length about what a behemothic leap forward the inclusion of an SSD drive would be compared to an HDD drive, which was the standard on PS4. Cerny explained how the increased read speed would mean developers wouldn't take to employ previously necessary programming tricks like duplicating avails and intentionally halting the player'due south progress to allow objects to load in the background.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales — (Image credit: Sony)

It's certainly been groovy being able to jump into a game similar Spider-Homo: Miles Morales with substantially zero loading screens, but the SSD has also allowed developers to seriously compress the file size footprint of their games.

Command: Ultimate Edition is a bully example of this. On Xbox Series X (which does use an SSD drive, but a slower one than PS5) the game is 42GB in size; on PS5 it'south just 25GB. Underwater survival game Subnautica weighs in at 15GB on the PS4; on the PS5 it'southward a tiny 5GB. These are just two examples among dozens.

In fact, our sis site Tom'southward Hardware, reports that file sizes on the PS5 are regularly around threescore% smaller thank you to this compression technology. Sony has given this tech the name "Kraken" internally, which seems rather fitting for a feature that is so powerful.

Giving developers the power to massively shrink the file size of their games has helped make upwards for the PS5'southward relatively modest hard drive and has allowed me to juggle multiple games at once without the headache of downloading, deleting, and re-downloading constantly.

Deletion no longer required

Best PS5 external hard drives: WD Black P50 — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

The PS5's get-go major console update, released in April, too added a much-needed feature: The ability to store PS5 games on an external hard drive. This has likewise helped to make the hard bulldoze of the PS5 feel even bigger.

While you, unfortunately, cannot play native PS5 games directly from an external bulldoze (though you can play PS4 games this way), you can utilise a bulldoze for temporary storage. Transferring a game back on to the internal SSD if you lot desire to actually play it.

Unfortunately, transferring games isn't instant. It took my PS5 14 minutes and 42 seconds to transfer Marvel's Avengers (file size 80.52GB) from an external drive to my PS5'southward SSD (and 16 mins 34 secs to transfer the other way). Even so, this process is significantly quicker than having to re-download the total game which even on my reasonably solid net would notwithstanding take at least an hour.

Due to the usefulness of this characteristic, I've now got a 2TB drive connected to my PS5 at all times. I use this bulldoze to shop PS4 games and next-gen titles that I don't desire to fully delete but aren't in my rotation of currently being played games.

Brand sure to check out our rundown of the best PS5 external difficult drives if yous're looking to pick one up for your console.

A long term solution is nevertheless needed

While the PS5's pinch tech is impressive, and the ability to store games on an external drive is handy, in the long term Sony needs to give players a mode to expand the PS5's core memory.

Games similar Call of Duty: Black Ops Common cold State of war (170GB, even without Warzone installed) and NBA 2K21 (122GB) already have upward nearly one-half of the PS5's SSD combined, and terminal generation games only get bigger in subsequent years after the PS4/Xbox One launched.

Seagate Xbox Series X Expansion Card — (Image credit: Seagate)

Seagate currently offers an officially licensed 1TB storage expansion card for the Xbox Series Ten, this doubles the console'southward storage. However, it costs an eye-watering $219, which is only $fourscore less than an entire Xbox Series South.

Sony has claimed that its own licensed boosted storage options will be coming in the near future. Although these accessories volition probably have an fifty-fifty bigger price tag due to the PS5'due south required SSD criterion, I'll likely still opt to choice one upwardly — I'll merely not wait at the receipt afterward.

While in the future I will undoubtedly want a bigger hard drive in my PS5 as more side by side-gen games launch and my library of PS5 games grows ever bigger, for now at to the lowest degree I'm shocked and impressed at how far Sony has managed to make 825GB stretch.