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The PS5 and External Storage - Will we know when it gets fixed?

8byte

8byte

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt-account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,880
Kansas
Considering that Sony (as far as I know) hasn't acknowledged that the external storage situation is extremely busted...will they let us know it's fixed / stable?

I've had my external drive completely corrupt twice, despite never putting the console in rest mode. The only viable solution, it would seem, is to eject your external storage each and every time you power off the PS5, and even that isn't a guaranteed means of prevention.

So, what do you think? Will we just find out because it stops happening one day? Or will Sony own it and let us know it's "fixed"?
 
RedHeat

RedHeat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,683
It could happen a couple days from now, it could happen in a year. Buckle up, Jimbo!
 
RockmanBN

RockmanBN

Visited by Knack - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,940
Cornfields
Still waiting to backup my PS5 saves to USB. I can do it with my PS4 saves, why not the PS5 saves?
 
Phokal

Phokal

Member
Oct 25, 2017
452
WI
I think it's the quantity of installed items moreso than external vs internal. If you unplug the drive and the many items remain in Library (after installing their stubs to Internal) the entire system remains way slower and more unstable. I've just unplugged it for now, reverted to factory defaults and installed only a handful of games to the internal and its way more stable now. Hopefully they're aware and fix whatever database issue or whatever it is from having "a lot of games" soon.
A friend also uses and external but only has a couple things on it (cod) and it's also been pretty stable for him.
 
reclaimerzzzzz

reclaimerzzzzz

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,136
Chettlar said:
Please tell me there's no way Sony would actually not make an exception for hard drives.
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Maybe, maybe not. I used to have a %100 error rate with my external hard drive before with the 3 hour limit on, and it's now working as expected after changing the setting to always allow power to the USB ports. I got the tip from the PS5 subreddit.
 

ilmunita

Member
Oct 27, 2017
25
Anecdotal evidence sure, but I haven't had any issues whatsoever using an external HDD (and rest mode). The HDD is 2TB Seagate Maxtor M3 which I also used on PS4.
 
LordofPwn

LordofPwn

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,402
my external drive worked fine and then a system software update made it unstable and would corrupt my external drive every-time i would turn off my system. rest mode was never an issue. i was using a 2TB Samsung T7 drive. plugged into the back of the system.
 
ohitsluca

ohitsluca

Member
Oct 29, 2017
730
Mine has worked flawlessly since I got it (a few days after launch). As someone else said, changing the USB power options might be what helped me. I went through every settings menu and changed that the first time I booted up, so i don't know if it actually makes a difference. I just know I changed the setting to always power USB ports and I have had 0 issues
 
Rosol

Rosol

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,396
My PS5 UI tends to chug a lot when I'm doing anything with the external, especially downloads - get a lot of 'content updated' icons where it fails to load the game info it updated. Half the time its ok speed, half the time it's laggy. I occasionally have to reindex and on one occasion had to start from scratch over again on the PS5 side. There definitely needs to be some kind of performance optimization and/or guidelines on what it needs to run smoothly (ie how many games can be installed) I use rest mode without any issues, I have more problems turning it off.
 
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MrFox

MrFox

VFX Rendering Pipeline Developer
Verified
Jun 8, 2020
1,435
It does make sense it would happen with some external SSDs and not HDDs.

HDDs write the data as it arrives from the interface so corruption from power failure is practically impossible with journaling file systems. Consumer grade SSD sometimes "lie" to the controller about writes being on disk, because it wants to accumulate the writes until it can do a full page write. This helps performance, but is a big risk of data corruption.

I know Micron have a capacitor which writes the remaining data when disconnecting power so it can tell the host "all data written" even if it's still in buffer. This should be the norm everywhere, but I don't think it is.

So it's possible there's a bug handling some drives controllers commands set. The sequence of command asking if all data is fully written might provide different results on different controllers.

I guess they can always add a long delay before removing the power. This is what linux does. I mean, it's not that complicated to wait 30 seconds after the last write.
 
MetalKhaos

MetalKhaos

Member
Oct 31, 2017
1,695
Here I am, just waiting for some news about the NVME expansion bay so I can pump up that internal SSD space.
 
degauss

degauss

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,631
External things hanging off my PS5 doesn't really appeal. I'm waiting to buy a 1 or 2TB NVME internal and just running everything from that. Who knows how long that patch is going to take though. I reckon a stability update for externals will be quicker.
 
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gothi

gothi

Prophet of Truth
Member
Jun 23, 2020
4,433
MrFox said:
You can backup your PS5 saves to USB in the system backup/restore menu. It's just all together.
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Whilst you're technically right this is incredibly impractical to the point of being next to useless for save file recovery. Not only will restoring wipe out any progress on any games you played since last backup you have to remember to do a full system backup on a regular basis.

I miss the days of save file backup & hacking (I still a website dedicated to it) but even I have come to accept that cloud backup is the way forward. We just need Sony to work on making their paid-for-service match what other vendors offer for free.
 
Ada

Ada

Member
Nov 28, 2017
3,731
I've never had true corruption just the dumb message that the drive needs repairing when everything is clearly fine. What is more annoying is resume failing when used with external games.
 
dallow_bg

dallow_bg

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,623
texas
Phokal said:
I think it's the quantity of installed items moreso than external vs internal. If you unplug the drive and the many items remain in Library (after installing their stubs to Internal) the entire system remains way slower and more unstable. I've just unplugged it for now, reverted to factory defaults and installed only a handful of games to the internal and its way more stable now. Hopefully they're aware and fix whatever database issue or whatever it is from having "a lot of games" soon.
A friend also uses and external but only has a couple things on it (cod) and it's also been pretty stable for him.
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I have over 400 PS4 games installed onto my external drive and it's smooth as when I reset it with nothing installed.
 
sora bora

sora bora

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,572
Huh. I've played my PS5 relentlessly since launch w/ a Seagate external HDD. No issues unexpected issues. Had a power outage that killed the console in sleep mode. Console auto-repaired the external akin to the PS4.

Is the issue that externals are getting corrupted in the normal course of use?
 
MrFox

MrFox

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Jun 8, 2020
1,435
sora bora said:
Huh. I've played my PS5 relentlessly since launch w/ a Seagate external HDD. No issues unexpected issues. Had a power outage that killed the console in sleep mode. Console auto-repaired the external akin to the PS4.

Is the issue that externals are getting corrupted in the normal course of use?
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Hard to tell without a good survey, but the most frequent occurence looks like a combination of:
1. rest mode
2. USB power settings to 3 hours
3. some models of external SSD

If people share the exact brand and model of the external drive, rest mode setting, and usb power setting, it could help build a list of factors that can cause the issue. And what to avoid until there's a firmware fix.
 

Sprat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,684
England
ilmunita said:
Anecdotal evidence sure, but I haven't had any issues whatsoever using an external HDD (and rest mode). The HDD is 2TB Seagate Maxtor M3 which I also used on PS4.
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Same here but seagate expansion plus.

I intentionally tried to trigger issues that others were having so I could return my ps5 if it had issues.

Only had a single crash playing astro otherwise smooth sailing
 

Sprat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,684
England
MrFox said:
Hard to tell without a good survey, but the most frequent occurence looks like a combination of:
1. rest mode
2. USB power settings to 3 hours
3. some models of external SSD

If people share the exact brand and model of the external drive, rest mode setting, and usb power setting, it could help build a list of factors that can cause the issue. And what to avoid until there's a firmware fix.
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Been using rest mode since day 1
USB set to auto off after 3h
Seagate expansion plus 2tb

Not had any issues at all
 

Kris1977

Member
Nov 25, 2017
975
I've had no issues here either using an 8tb external hard drive. Sure it takes 30 seconds from a clean boot to index all the games but I've not had one single issue and that 8tb drive is almost full.
 
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