Why & How to Replace PS4 Hard Drive with an SSD

Getting an SSD for your PS4 means you’re a serious player who wants to take his gaming experience with PS4 to the next level. Actually, upgrading the internal hard drive of PS4 to a better drive is a trend among PS4 users that’s getting bigger day after day. This is also the case with replacing PS4 hard drive with an SSD. No wonder why! It’s simply because SSDs are much faster and magnitudes reliable than the traditional hard drive. What if you get to know then that the stock hard drive of PS4 is just a piece of “junk” that’s not worth any real value in today’s world. PS4 stock hard drive is slow, old and obsolete that any aware user wants to replace with a newer and stronger alternative.

An SSD is the option that all enthusiasts look forward to replacing the PS4 hard drive with. But, as usual, the high price of SSDs imperatively brings up the question about whether it’s worth it to replace PS4 hard drive with an SSD or just go to another classical hard drive but with better specs? This article tries to provide a sufficient answer alongside illustrating how to replace PS4 hard drive with an SSD the right way without any hassle.

Why to Replace PS4 HDD with an SSD

In order to realize for what reasons you will want to replace the stock PS4 hard drive with the flash-based SSD, you must first learn about the benefits of using these super-fast storage devices inside PS4 console.

Benefits of Using SSD in PS4

Using an SSD with PS4 has several significant benefits that surely please every user who looks seriously to enhance their gaming experience with PS4. These benefits are:

The Advantages

• SSDs are the most reliable storage devices ever in history. Therefore, if you care too much about performance consistency and the safety of your installed data, SSD is the number one choice to consider. Without any exaggeration, they can last more than 5 years in use with no failure at all. Just make sure to pick the right SSD that belongs to a renowned brand; such as Samsung, Crucial, Corsair, SanDisk, etc.
• When talking about speed, SSD is king. An SSD can significantly decrease the loading time of your games and applications and make them launch in a remarkably shorter time. Users reported performance improvement between 40% to 60% when using an SSD with PS4. Additionally, if you own PS4 Pro, the results are even better.
• With an SSD, you’ll get a better and smoother online gaming experience. That’s possible only if your opponents also use SSDs.
• You can get up to 4tb of internal SSD upgrade for PS4 without having to use any additional equipment to achieve this goal. Whereas this is not possible with traditional hard drives.
• A well-reputed SSD comes nowadays with a standard 5-year limited warranty. This just reflects how solid these devices are, to the extent that the manufacturers dare giving that long warranty.

Additionally, someone has made a comment on our website stating the following:

I have read a lot of these PS4 HDD to SSD upgrade drive. First, there is more to it than just storage. Installing an SSD affects the performance on a PS4 system in other ways. One of the best benefits of an SSD is the use of the system software while playing a game at the same time. On the old traditional HDD it is very slow and almost non responsive at times.

I hated playing a game and then trying to access the party chat or send a message menu only to wait what seemed like an eternity. In certain games you need to change from game chat to party chat or send a message quick due to something in game happening right at that moment.

When I upgraded to a quality SSD that problem disappeared completely. Then there is heat issues too. SSDs will run a lot cooler than the old HDD. HDDs will never out perform an SSD. Even a 15000 rpm drive. Traditional HDDs have moving parts that must spin to a certain speed to transmit data.

Quality more expensive technology usually always runs better than cheaper technology. You cannot expect to get the same results out of a cheap SSD/HDD. That has not changed since technology started being commonly available. Sony is using crap traditional HDDs in the PS4 in the first place.

The Disadvantages

As for the disadvantages, I cannot see anything in SSD we can consider a disadvantages in comparison with HDD except the high price. While you can get 1tb hard drive for just $50 or less, the 1tb SSD costs you more than $120. If you can afford it, just go for it. Otherwise, think about an SSHD as an alternative to SSD.

How to Replace PS4 HDD with an SSD

The process of replacing PS4 HDD with an SSD is exactly the same as that with any other drive, whether it’s another classical hard drive or an SSHD (Solid state hybrid drive).

PS4 HDD Replacement Process

The first step you need is to remove PS4 HDD in order to get the drive cage ready for the SSD. Afterwards, you need to learn how to install the SSD inside PS4 and set it up properly by installing PS4 system software on it.

1. After removing Ps4 hard drive, just cram the SSD inside the PS4 drive cage and fix the side screws to get it properly installed.
2. You now need to initialize the SSD, grabbing the full system firmware update file from the PlayStation site—it’s the exact same file for all PlayStation 4 models and should be around 900MB in size for new installations, that is an important point.
3. Create a folder on a USB drive named PS4 and within that another folder named UPDATE, into which you put the PS4UPDATE.PUP file you just downloaded.
4. Plug that into a USB port on the console and then put the PS4 into recovery mode by holding the power button until it beeps a second time, which should take around 7 seconds.
5. Select ‘Initialize PS4’ and follow the instructions on screen.

If you need help with upgrading or replacing your PS4 hard drive, the video embedded below can walk you through the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18EKMmmHhf8

Conclusion

Like what has been said earlier, SSD’s are very powerful and offer unparalleled speed that mechanical HdDs can’t compete with. When you decide to use an SSD in place of the stock hard drive of PS4, it means you’ve chosen to seriously boost the performance of your game console. You’ll feel what it means to enhance the gaming experience and move to the next level with these drives. Moreover, the reliability of SSD’s are unarguable that if you care much about your data, you can’t neglect them.

But what about the steep price that you have to pay for an SSD? This is the biggest problem. You can still have a high performance alternative with an SSHD. But SSHD’s reliability are just the same as that of mechanical hard drives. And although you’ll get almost 80% of the SSD performance with SSHD, SSD’s don’t have a real rival.

Eventually, you have to gauge the PS4 SSD benefits and think whether it suits your needs or not. Think carefully before making your final step.