Grabbing one of the best PS4 external hard drives can help you make the most of your Sony machine without needing the funds to invest in a brand-new PS5. The very best in external PS4 drives can give your aging console a new lease on life by introducing larger storage capacities than any existing PS4 model, and the list of compatible drives has only grown over the decade.
Through testing, the best PS4 external hard drive we've put through its paces is the WD My Passport 4TB Portable. It's a pretty compact storage solution that provides a staggering amount of space for your PlayStation 4 games. While it can't keep up with the best external hard drives for gaming that use solid-state drives, this option is a more affordable way to expand your older console's library. However, that's not to say you can't use a portable SSD with Sony's last-gen console, and we've got plenty of recommendations for those to fit all budgets.
I grew up gaming on a tight, almost non-existent budget, so making the most of older consoles like the PS4 is something I take pretty seriously. It's why I'm glad so many external drives out there still exist to give your PS4 a little storage boost and help prolong its lifespan, but there's a lot out there. To make picking a new drive for your PS4 easier, I'm here to help recommend what's best for your PlayStation gaming needs and budget.
March 10 - Since the last update, I have included the Seagate Astro Bot Limited Edition Gaming Hard Drive as the best-looking external PS5 hard drive. While primarily aimed at PS5 players, this HD can store and run PS4 titles, and looks absolutely adorable with its Astro Bot-inspired look. TeamASOBI's Astro is draped on the front and back of the drive, and there's even a set of eyes and a strip of blue LED lighting at the edge to bring the whole look together. The drive doesn't just look great, but it can provide up to 5TB of storage for your PS4 and the PS5 when you're ready to make the next-gen leap.
The best PS4 external hard drive overall
The My Passport drive from Western Digital is one of the most reliable, convenient, and versatile HDDs you can buy. Anyone looking for a standard, reasonably priced PS4 external hard drive will be fine with this. It's USB 3.0 compatible, importantly, and only requires a quick reformat the first time you use it. It's small and sturdy too, about the size of a larger smart phone like the iPhoneX or the Galaxy S9 Plus, and the My Passport series is even styled to look a little like the PS4 console itself, so you should be able to slot it right into your set-up. The new aesthetic is arguably even more pleasing and brings further style to a quality HDD.
We'd go for the 4TB version, for several reasons. Right now, you see the biggest savings on the 4TB, and you tend to get better value the bigger the storage capacity. With 4TB, you've easily got space for 50+ AAA games, and loads more indies and smaller downloads from the PS Store. Essentially, this HDD will last you for about 2-3 years before you ever need to manage your storage, and that's with heavy use and loads of games installed on it. Definitely the best PS4 external hard drive today.
The best external SSD for PS4
The WD_Black P40 SSD is the latest in WD's gaming-focused external hard drives, and it's one of the best performers you can get your hands on. It takes the robust design and speedy specs of the P50 and carries both over to a small form factor body that emits some lovely ambient RGB lighting.
Unfortunately, the P40 is one of the more expensive options to go for because it's a recent release from one of the biggest brands in the storage market. For your purchase though, you get the drive itself, a USB-C cable and USB-A adapter, a quick install guide, WD's Windows dashboard, and a 5-year warranty I'd be surprised if you need to use.
Read and write speeds were great in testing. The 2000MB/s speed you see on the box is as good as you'll get in an external hard drive, but in reality, it translates to some great load times and transfer speeds on PS5 and PC. For instance, I had a load of game capture footage stored on my PS5 I had been meaning to move across to my computer for video editing, and even though it was about 30 clips spanning a total of 22GB, the P40 swallowed it up from the PS5 in about a minute. The same was true of games once I formatted the drive for some extra storage. I transferred three games that added up to 18GB, and it moved across in just shy of a minute.
If you can afford it, this is the best external SSD for PS4 you'll find.
The best budget external PS4 hard drive
If you're on the hunt for cheap and cheerful HDD storage, it doesn't get much easier for us than pointing you in the direction of an absolute staple of the market. The Toshiba Canvio Advance is a lovely piece of kit that continues to get updated every year or so: you can find it with a glossy shell, a simple design, and a neat, blue power light on the top. More recently, it sports a fancy Sackboy-esque mesh outer material and comes in loads of colors.
It doesn't require an additional power source and simply plugs into the USB port on your PS4. We try not to lean into this hardware-reviewing trope too much, but this is a product that "just works". It has read and write speeds that are standard for any HDD device and comes with a two-year warranty as standard. If you want to use it for a PC too, it has password protection and automatic file back-up, which are both useful features that elevate this model above our previous budget pick, the Canvio Basics.
You should be able to grab the 1TB version for around $50 / £50, which makes it a genuine bargain too.
The best budget external PS4 SSD
While we are all moving slowly but surely to SSDs becoming the go-to for PS4 external hard drives, they can still be pricey units; an HDD will still offer way better GB to $/£ value, of course. However, there are chinks forming in the prices of SSDs and the Crucial X6 offers a quality, slightly cheaper offering while still giving you that excellent performance and decent capacity.
Demonstrating this clearly is the fact that you can get a 1TB X6 for a similar price of SSDs with less than half of the storage. The Crucial X6 is fantastic for storing and playing PS4 games and will ensure you have the speediest of file transfers, loads, and games at your fingertips. A big benefit is that of getting a PS4 external hard drive that's likely faster than your PS4's internal one, and this will also be a drive that will go incredibly well with the new-gen PS5 console when and if folks upgrade.
The drive's USB-C connection means you'll have to use the adapter that comes with it to plug into your PS4, but you'll just have to be aware of the short cable that might force it into some weird positions. If you like the look of this one, but want an even faster version, you'll want to take a look at the Crucial X8.
The best Samsung external PS4 hard drive
The Samsung T7 Shield is the newest in a long and storied line of high-speed and high-performance drives from the company, with a newly refined focus on being rugged. This is one of the fastest PS4 external hard drives that you can get your hands on right now, with sequential performance of up to 1,050 MB/s read and 1,000 MB/s write respectively. Priced at $159.99 / £134.79 for a 1TB model or $289.99 / £250.99 for 2TB, this is also one of the most expensive, too.
You're paying a premium on the tactile design here, though. While we didn't exactly run drop tests ourselves, we do believe that the Samsung T7 Shield can take a decent beating. If you're in the market for a PS4 external hard drive to throw into your bag without fear of damage, then this is one for you. Samsung itself claims that the hard drive can survive drops of up to 3 meters into the air onto concrete, with their case testing happening four times before they're shipped out.
The best portable PS4 SSD
Crucial by Micron's latest and greatest external SSD is the Crucial X10 Pro, and the brand gives you the choice of either 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB of space in a tiny drive you can easily fit in your pocket. While I was a bit too scared to test its durability properly, it's marketed as being resistant to splashes, dust, and drops. For those reasons, we award it with the best external hard drive for portability.
Its speeds aren't too shabby either. Used with the PS5, I managed to move a hefty 439.5GB from the console to the X10 Pro in 34 mins. While that might seem like a small eternity with today's Gen 5 SSD speeds, just imagine the time it'd take to download that much raw data. Transferring 46GB worth of 2018's God of War from the hard drive to console storage, meanwhile, took only 5 minutes and 16 seconds. The speeds on the box here are 2,100MB/s read, and 2,000MB/s write, so it wouldn't shy away from the absolute best options on the top of this list.
The only problem is, this is meant for professionals, not necessarily gamers. That means its shorts cable is designed for being sat next to a laptop, so sitting it atop a PS4 in an aesthetically pleasing way isn't the easiest. On that "meant-for-professionals" note, it is also fairly pricey thanks to being quite new still. Regardless, this is definitely one of the best PS4 external hard drives on the market if you want a portable solution for gaming, work, or content creation.
The best large external PS4 hard drive
Increase your storage again with this ridiculously well priced 6TB offering from Seagate. It's slick, slim and you can get versions from 2TB upwards - although this 6TB model represents the best value for money. It's a simple plug and play setup on two counts: mains power; and USB 3.0. The latter being excellent for transferring speedily. The price is kept low by the fact this is a standard HDD, so read speeds won't be as fast as the SSD hard drives like the Samsung. If you get a 6TB drive... that'll probably store between 80-100 PS4 games, so you'll never need to worry about space again.
The best designed external PS4 hard drive
If you're looking for an external PS4 hard drive and would prefer it to majorly up the cute factor of your Sony gaming setup, grabbing the Seagate Astro Bot Limited Edition Gaming Hard Drive is your best bet. This HD is aimed primarily towards PS5 players, which makes sense given it's draped in a design based on a PS5 game, but it's actually able to store and run PS4 games too.
It's essentially a re-skin of the Seagate Game Drive, and features stunning artwork based on the TeamASOBI Astro Bot platformer, including the cutie Astro on the front. There's even a set of blue eyes at the edge, which is paired with a strip of blue LED lighting to bring the whole thing together. Of course, it doesn't just look the part, but this drive can also provide 144.41 MB/s read and 141.77 MB/s write speeds, as achieved during my Seagate Astro Bot Limited Edition Gaming Hard Drive review. In practice, this meant that PS4 titles like Prey loaded up in just 34.96 seconds, which is not too shabby.
You're getting 5TB worth of storage here too, which is plenty to keep you going if you're making the most out of the older PS5 console.
Best PS4 external hard drives: FAQs
Are PS4 external hard drives worth it?
In short, yes. One of the best PS4 external hard drives will be more than worth it when you take into account how many games you'll be able to store when you use one - especially through services like PS Plus. While as of January 29, Sony announced on their PlayStation blog that PS4 games would "PS4 games will no longer be a key benefit" to the service. Any PS4 games already redeemed won't be affected, so having a plethora of storage is still worthwhile if you have a ton of PS4 games claimed over the years.
With a large capacity PS4 hard drive at your service, it can also save you the fuss of deleting, downloading, and reinstalling other games you don't want to get rid of. Not to mention, they can bring about excellent performance boosts for your console since even an external SSD will bring you faster load times than the HDD you get inside your console.
Is it worth putting an SSD in the PS4?
Although the process is a bit of a pain with all the data backups, transfers, and DIY, it is definitely worth putting an SSD in the PS4. In terms of performance, an SSD could make your PS4 around 30% faster. You'll also get a massive quality of life boost as well, seeing as whatever SSD you buy will likely have much more capacity than your console's base HDD.
What kind of external hard drive do I need for a PS4?
There aren't any specific types of external hard drive you'll need to use with the PS4. Any USB 3.0 HDD or SSD will work, and capacity shouldn't be an issue either. Although, it's worth noting that you will need to format whatever drive you get to make it compatible with the PS4's software and storage type. Once you do format a drive to this type, you most likely won't be able to use it for any other purpose, which is a bit of a shame.
Will my PS4 external hard drive work with the PS5?
Any external hard drive you've formatted to use with your PS4, will work the next-generation Sony console. However, you won't be able to run PS5 games from the drive. Unlike some of the best SSDs, you'll only be able to store PS5 games from the shared external hard drive, which can still be helpful if you're notorious for downloading the latest PS Plus Premium titles.
How we test the best PS4 external hard drive
When testing the best PS4 external hard drives, we take each SSD and HDD and asses them based on multiple factors, just like we do for its next-generational counterpart. This includes assessing its capacity, speed, durability, and price. Not all storage options will have the same specs across the board, so appropriately weighing up what each option offers for its MSRP is crucial, especially as we don't like to alienate anyone who might have a tighter budget in mind when it comes to picking up extras for their beloved Sony consoles.
To get thing started, we first look at what each PS4 external hard drive can offer in the way of sequential read and write speeds. We measure data transfer times across both PC and PS4 (and PS5 if its compatible with the current-gen console) to ensure the process of moving games between the system and the hard drive is smooth and fast. These transfers consist of larger games, spanning the PS4 (and PS5's) release catalogue.
While you can't run Ps5 games off of external drives, the PS4 is a little different. You can run Ps4 games from external drives, and so, alongside measuring transfer times against the marketed speeds of the drive, we also make sure to measure loading times of first-party PS4 games, and compare the results against the cold boot times of the internal console's storage.
For more information on how we test SSDs and hard drives, visit our GamesRadar+ hardware policy for more info.
How to choose the best PS4 external hard drive
Choosing the best external hard drive for your PS4 can be confusing at first, but overall, you can narrow down your choices to a few major factors. First and foremost, how much storage capacity can meet your needs. If you like to switch between multiple games at a time, you'll likely need to look at drives with larger storage capacities.
Storage capacity is honestly the core determining factor you should consider with external PS4 hard drives, as it'll narrow down which type of storage you inevitably buy. Picking up a drive like the Toshiba 1TB Canvio Advance will give you plenty of space to store your PS4 game library and any new PS Plus games that you have your eyes on. In the almost 12 years since the PS4 originally launched, large capacity external hard drives have been steadily getting cheaper too. As long as you aren't looking at any external SSDs, you can keep your costs low even if you pick up at least 1TB for your Sony console - which is ideal for anyone with a budget in mind.
Switching the conversation to physical size, portability is crucial if you're gaming on the go. The PS4 isn't known for its portability, but if you happen to take it with you or just like to have your games with you all times, then you'll want to look at smaller, more compact external drives like the WD My Passport 4TB Portable Hard Drive.
Those of you on a budget will naturally also want to keep pricing in mind. It's all fine and well splashing out on the fastest drives with maximum capacity (which is likely when it comes to external SSDs in particular), but costs can limit your practical choices. Striking a balance between specs and MSRP is key, and sometimes, opting for slower or smaller can help you still upgrade your PS4 storage in a wise fashion.
If you want to upgrade the storage of your other consoles, check out our guides to the best SSD for PS5, the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD cards, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive, SSD, and memory card solutions.
