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Sony needs to address the SSD storage issue on ps5

Petruccis Biceps

Petruccis Biceps

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,533
Sorry if answered already OP, but do you just have ps5 games installed right now? or do you have a lot of ps4 games installed as well?

I just bought an external SSD to free up space since I had a bunch of PS4 games installed as well. Temporary solution until they announce the expansion slot storage. You can even get a cheaper large external HDD if you dont want to spend too much on an external SSD.
 
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Metro Cow

Member
Nov 28, 2020
222
Why is there so much surprise that people like to have more than one or two games installed at a time?

The fact is, most AAA games inevitably get DLC, which means for people like me with slow broadband, I would rather keep a game I've finished installed than have to re-download it all when the DLC comes out.

Or, I might start a game, reach a difficult point or get burned out with it and decide to come back later and play something else in the interim. Again, I wouldn't want to delete the game outright because it would take 12-18 hours to download it again.

A lot of people don't play one game to completion at a time. I usually beat the main story, then come back to it later if I want to do more sidequests or obtain trophies.

I'd say the SSD space currently isn't a massive issue with how few PS5 games are available at the moment, but it will probably become an issue within the next year so therefore I would hope that they will allow supplementary NVMe drives to be installed sometime next year.
 

Bucéfalo

Banned
May 29, 2020
1,566
Yes, they actually have to address many things. In fact I sold my Ps5 last saturday because this is far from a finished product. It is enjoyable? Of couse, but has too many flaws (both hardware and software wise) and I just prefer to wait for a complete revision, call of it slim or whatever.
 
blastprocessor

blastprocessor

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,884
Just imagine the amount of extra revenue Sony could have made if they released their own approved SSD drive day 1. Missed opportunity.
 
Jumpman23

Jumpman23

Member
Nov 14, 2017
1,000
People making light of this and saying things like "how many games are you playing at once?", "why do you need so many games installed?" are honestly asking ridiculous questions. Take ANY other media like music or movies and mirror this problem. The community at large would be quite upset. Next gen needs to make improvements and this storage fiasco is a HUGE step backwards. When you buy something you want access to it. Having to uninstall and reinstall games that can be quite large, eat up people's data and take ages to download depending upon bandwidth is not ideal, reasonable or desired.
 
Fhtagn

Fhtagn

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,615
I have been juggling space to prioritize games I'm actually playing and ones I think I'd get to soon, but I'm in the "it's ok for now but they better have this sorted a year from now"

my priorities:
1. reliable external storage support for PS4 games
2. cold storage for PS5 games to external drives so that I don't have to download 100gb games a second time.
3. SSD expansion options

The first one seems the most important; external drives are causing issues, fix that. As someone involved in testing/qualifying hardware professionally, the second option feels easier to me than qualifying SSD support. The third will let us get over 1TB of usable space, which should help power users/edge cases.
 
dallow_bg

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,628
texas
JohnnyMoses said:
I got my PS5 on launch day and had to delete games the same day. I bought Valhalla, Sackboy, Demon's Souls, downloaded Ark, Dark Souls 3, and the free games, Bugsnax and Astro, then started recording some clips. By the afternoon, storage was full and I had to start deleting things.

That's cool that some of you play 1 or 2 games at a time. I don't. I usually have a single player game or two that I'm playing, a couple multiplayer games, then games I always go back to such as Ark, Skyrim and Fallout 4. I'd like more storage.
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Get an external storage drive for all those PS4 games.
 
Dreamwriter

Dreamwriter

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,461
Metro Cow said:
Why is there so much surprise that people like to have more than one or two games installed at a time?
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The PS5 storage is enough for a dozen games, not "one or two". I currently have Demon's Souls, Cyberpunk, both Spider-Man games, Dirt 5, Bug Snax, Astro, Worms, and Ratchet & Clank PS4, and still have a couple hundred GB free.
 
TeenageFBI

TeenageFBI

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,229
Era, some of these responses are embarrassin. It's possible to like a company and its hardware while simultaneously recognizing its drawbacks. PS5 storage is hilariously inadequate.

Personally, I'm less interested in cold storage than I am a second SSD.
 
fourfourfun

fourfourfun

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,680
England
I've run out of space on both my switches, if I haven't touched a game in months then I delete to make room. I certainly delete single player games I've completed.

There is a balance for space/available titles and it isn't unfair to expect people to manage their space.
 
Euan_1981

Euan_1981

Member
Apr 23, 2018
330
blackMamba1187 said:
I love to keep evergreen titles: shooters, fighting games, racing and sports games installed for quick/random access. Also, whatever discs I happen to have at the time and whatever else that recently came out. It adds up quick. Obviously, push come to shove, I can pear back what is installed, but I hate the barriers on any consoles I've had. As it is, my ps5 crashes if I have my external plugged in, so any PS4 games I might want at the ready are also eating up storage on the internal drive.
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Basically, this. I have a few games installed as I have diff friends who play diff games and warzone takes up 1/6 of the available space. I just don't trust plugging a standard hd into the ps5 yet. Its annoying but not the end of the world. Ps. I'm Lucky not to have data caps.
 
Dreamwriter

Dreamwriter

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,461
Guerrilla said:
I was under the impression there were drives out there already that sony would be able to certify, no? Or is there really nothing actually capable out there yet?
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The problem is Sony went out-of-spec for their internal drive, to make up for that a third party drive would have to have faster reads/writes than Sony's drive. One difference is that games can set different priorities in the files they ask for, so if they ask to load a death animation, that will take precedence over loading the sound of a bird chirping. The current SSD standard is to have up to two levels of priority, Sony's controller asks for I think 5 levels of priority. As I understand it, there are a couple SSDs on the market fast enough, but it's going to require lots of testing to make sure they work with all released games and some unreleased games like Ratchet & Clank.
 
Stooge

Stooge

Member
Oct 29, 2017
11,138
Man, there are an awful lot of people dismissing a legit issue from the OP:

I own a PS5 and a XSX and of these two consoles:

1) Lets me cold storage games on an HDD
2) Sells an upgraded storage solution I can play games from.

I have already filled my XSX internal drive with a combination of the 2-3 single player games I'm playing right now, the 4 current sports games that I like to dabble in and the 3 online games I like to play somewhat regularly.

It's more than reasonable that Sony *at least* figured out cold storage by launch given how small these drives are compared to game sizes, but I don't think its unreasonable that Sony also figured out at least one third party partner to work with on getting something at least on the calendar that we could look to.

I'm an all digital gamer and last gen I didn't delete games unless I was totally completely done with ever picking them up again. That seems out of reach for both consoles this gen, but I at least don't want to have to manage data that closely.
 
8byte

8byte

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt-account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,880
Kansas
I just genuinely hope that cold storage is something Sony seriously considers for PS5 games.
 
Guerrilla

Guerrilla

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,235
Dreamwriter said:
The problem is Sony went out-of-spec for their internal drive, to make up for that a third party drive would have to have faster reads/writes than Sony's drive. One difference is that games can set different priorities in the files they ask for, so if they ask to load a death animation, that will take precedence over loading the sound of a bird chirping. The current SSD standard is to have up to two levels of priority, Sony's controller asks for I think 5 levels of priority. As I understand it, there are a couple SSDs on the market fast enough, but it's going to require lots of testing to make sure they work with all released games and some unreleased games like Ratchet & Clank.
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Damn, ok this makes sense.
 
Mona

Mona

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
26,151
Snake Eater said:
I just don't understand why people have to stack so many downloadable games when they're only playing a couple at a time
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as a physical owner i aint downloading a fucking 20GB patch every time i want to play something different, which is something im forced to because games these days are increasingly shipping in unfinished states
 
pg2g

pg2g

Member
Dec 18, 2018
4,794
So PS5 does not currently allow storing PS5 games to an external drive as backup?
 
SeanMN

SeanMN

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,185
Spiderman said:
So you bought a console while knowing the limitations and now you are complaining?
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mikeys_legendary said:
Well they told us we would get a list of available expansion options after launch. It's coming, people are just going to have to wait for now.

Its not like they hid this information either.
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Expy said:
Sony never impled it would be there at launch. They even went as far as to tell us to wait until they gave us a list on compatible drives.
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While Playstation did inform people that there might not be compatible SSD drives at launch earlier this year, and they did mention that PS5 games can only be played on a supported SSD (Internal or Expansion when available), there was no mention of the PS5 lacking the ability to use a USB HDD/SSD for cold storage - this wasn't known until right around console launch.

PS4 can store PS4 games on a USB hard drive, but PS5 can't store PS5 games on a hard drive. Sony really dropped the ball not having this ready at launch, not communicating it properly to gamers, and not offering a supported SSD at launch.
nath999 said:
People know there is a pandemic happening right?

Delete your games until they come out with extended storage.
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What does the pandemic have to do with this? These are things Sony should've had worked out well before the pandemic started. And if they were impacted by the pandemic, they could do better at communicating it than Jim Ryan has done.

"Delete your games" is such a terrible response. Don't assume other peoples gaming habits are the same as yours. Give the size of the available storage on PS5 and the size of current games out there, I'm not surprised at all people are hitting the limits. Data caps should also be considered - I went 25% over my November cap downloading/updating games, and I'd rather not go over the cap again.
 
Dr. Collins

Dr. Collins

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
812
They will. Just give them 2 years. I'll definitely buy in on next gen once the kinks are worked out and there's like a 2TB storage on PS5 Slim
 
AngelOFDeath

AngelOFDeath

Member
Nov 13, 2017
2,373
Definitely need cold storage to be allowed for PS5 games. I've stuck PS4 games on an external and playing off of that right now. But baby steps I guess.

it took Sony almost 4 years to use an external on PS4. The only difference was that you COULD have increased the internal. For PS5 since that isn't possible, they need to step it up. Hey at least there isn't THAT many PS5 only games right now lol.
 

martinstraka8282

Member
Dec 15, 2017
1,354
Live in a place with slow internet with strict bandwidth restrictions and try telling people its easy to re-download games.

We unfortunately are not all on the same playing field.

I personally like to jump between about 5-7 at a time between sports, racing, kart racing, and an adventure game or two, whereas some people would play one online game primarily for example.
 
sjackso3

sjackso3

Member
Oct 30, 2017
630
Houston
I am one of the people that plays multiple games at the same time. I jump from game to game and genre to genre as I get bored easily. Also, I love sports games and shooters as much as love RPGs. Needless to say, my gaming habits take up a lot of space.

I am not getting PS5 until they work this out. Great console, great games, innovative controller, but the lack of storage options is a deal breaker for me.
 
New Donker

New Donker

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 26, 2017
5,355
Theoretically, what would ps5 cold storage be like? Would it be a pretty quick transfer to the built in hard drive or would it be somewhat similar to just re downloading a game?
 
Dreamwriter

Dreamwriter

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Oct 27, 2017
7,461
New Donker said:
Theoretically, what would ps5 cold storage be like? Would it be a pretty quick transfer to the built in hard drive or would it be somewhat similar to just re downloading a game?
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Hard drive to hard drive transfer is usually going to be faster than redownloading, when one of the drives is a fast SSD. The PS5 SSD has a raw speed of 5.5GB/second. For internet, most people still consider 128MB/second as insanely fast (that's gigabit internet at best possible speed).

Admittedly, that 5.5GB/second is the read speed, while in this situation the write speed would be just as important, but most SSD write speeds are just a bit slower than their reads, like a 3.5GB read speed will be coupled with a 2.3GB write speed.
 
xem

xem

Member
Oct 31, 2017
2,043
i think id rather have cold storage first. those SSDs for expansion will be too much money for me to justify the inconvenience of deleting/waiting to download games again.
 
tok9

tok9

Prophet of Truth
Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,995
blastprocessor said:
Just imagine the amount of extra revenue Sony could have made if they released their own approved SSD drive day 1. Missed opportunity.
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The extra revenue from third party drives? Pretty much everything PS5 related is selling out as soon as it goes up, I think that is a much bigger revenue generator. This storage issue is overblown on enthusiast sites like era
 
blastprocessor

blastprocessor

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Oct 25, 2017
2,884
tok9 said:
The extra revenue from third party drives? Pretty much everything PS5 related is selling out as soon as it goes up, I think that is a much bigger revenue generator. This storage issue is overblown on enthusiast sites like era
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Sony could have made their own expansion board using the same SSD chips inside the PS5 released day 1 no validation required.
 
New Donker

New Donker

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Oct 26, 2017
5,355
Dreamwriter said:
Hard drive to hard drive transfer is usually going to be faster than redownloading. The PS5 SSD has a raw speed of 5.5GB/second. For internet, most people still consider 128MB/second as insanely fast (that's gigabit internet at best possible speed).

Admittedly, that 5.5GB/second is the read speed, while in this situation the write speed would be just as important, but most SSD write speeds are just a bit slower than their reads, like a 3.5GB read speed will be coupled with a 2.3GB write speed.
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pg2g said:
External HDD would probably be somewhere between a 500mbit and 1gbit download.
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thank you thank you. Now I just need to decide between the 1TB or the 2TB Samsung T7. I'm leaning towards the 1 since I'm sure I'll expand using an NVMe drive whenever that option is available
 
endlessflood

endlessflood

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
8,693
Australia (GMT+10)
PenultimateFantasy said:
Sony said they would be expandable storage and implied it would be ther at aunch.
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Mark Cerny, Road To PS5 presentation (19 March 2020):

"Once we've done that compatibility testing, we should be able to start letting you know which drives will physically fit, and which drive samples have benchmarked appropriately high in our testing. It would be great if that happened by launch, but it's likely to be a bit past it."

23:21 is the time stamp.
 
Beef Supreme

Beef Supreme

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,073
I'm glad I'm not having that problem. All my PS4 games are on an external SDD and my PS5 games are on my internal. After every game I finish, I just delete them. I currently have over 400GBs available.
 
Kaiser Swayze

Kaiser Swayze

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,613
I'm sure they're working on it, but it's probably not as high a priority as making sure the overall system is working properly. Just getting a console seems to be the biggest challenge right now. I would prepare for a bit of a wait.
 
Jiraiya

Jiraiya

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,279
Beef Supreme said:
I'm glad I'm not having that problem. All my PS4 games are on an external SDD and my PS5 games are on my internal. After every game I finish, I just delete them. I currently have over 400GBs available.
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So there are games you don't delete? Sounds like you should have more space of you don't keep games you don't play downloaded.
 
OGM_Madness

OGM_Madness

Unshakable Resolve - One Winged Slayer
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Dec 3, 2019
508
I mean... they already addressed this. They mentioned that there will be SSDs available, but not yet. They are waiting on NVME SSD drives that are compatible with their speed requirements. The console already has an expansion bay when you take out the top panel. I expect around summer. I think the Xbox solution is more elegant, but then again, it's branded storage which only works on Xbox... remember the hate Sony got with PSP memory cards? Vita cards?

Either way, once I buy additional storage for my PS5, it'll pretty much stay in for years. I'll try to buy 2TB if they aren't too expensive. 1TB on my PS4 feels like it's not enough.

The great thing is that if you buy 500GB, 1TB, etc, it'll be added to the internal memory, unlike the PS4. That's a big plus IMO. So you'll have 825GB + whatever you buy. You could have roughly 3TB (closet to 2.5TB) if you get a 2TB compatible drive.
 
BlackGoku03

BlackGoku03

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,272
I'm glad I don't have this problem either. No cap from the ISP and downloads are crazy fast on the PS5. Plus, my free time amounts to an hour a day to play so I don't need a dozen games on the console at any given time.

I'm sure they'll announce something soon but I bet their focus is on stock and firmware issues at the moment.
 
mgrimble2

mgrimble2

Member
Aug 21, 2019
184
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
aerach71 said:
Are you playing 8 games at a time OP?
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This. I think I am in the minority here, but I only play 1-3 games MAX at a time. That's usually not 3 big AAA games either.

It's more like one deep game, Ghost of Tsushima right now. One side game like Sackboy and then an Indy one like Slay the Spire.

I'll never understand the need to have 15 full size games sitting on their system just in case they want to start them up again.
 
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