How to use the PS5’s M.2 SSD expandable storage

You can get an SSD up and running in less than two minutes.

[darthv72]

Im curious if you have wait for the data to finish moving between drives before doing other stuff or can you queue them up and have it do its thing while you go back to the main screen and maybe play something else (that is not being moved)?

on a side note. Tom's twitter vid of how you upgrade SSD on both was pretty funny.

[Eonjay]

I mean from the onboard storage to M2 storage it only took Rachet and Clank 30 seconds (40 GBs). The time it takes seems really negligible.

For comparison the transfer rate on form XSX to expandable storage is about 600 MB/s to the PS5s 1.4 GB/s
The same Rachet and Clank operation on XSX would take about 70 seconds.

So even the Xbox result isn't terrible. But yeah the PS5 transfer speeds are really up there.

[darthv72]

yeah, for one game. I plan to transfer a bunch from my external hdd to the new expansion (when it goes live) but i dont want to have to sit on that screen until the last one finishes. I figured it would work like when you are installing games from the download queue. Works in the background.

[Eonjay]

Wait are you saying that you want to transfer PS5 games from external to the M2? If its PS4 games why bother, just leave them on the external HDD. Thats what I'm doing. You wont get any meaningful boost in PS4 games plus you need to save the space for PS5 game that actually require that level of speed.

For internal:
Quick calculation I did. Feel free to correct if anyone has a better calculation:
I mean if you could transfer all 667 GBs of storage (which of course you can't) from the PS5 to the M2, it would complete in under 11 minutes. Realistically you are are looking at about 8 to 9 minutes tops.

Also above I said 1.4 GB/s but it probably closer to 1.1 GB/s

[gaffyh]

Why wouldn't you get a meaningful boost? I'm sure there will be comparison videos pretty soon that show the difference in load speed, I'm sure there will be some improvement at least.

[darthv72]

@jay Yes, currently I have 3 PS5 games on my external hdd because they wont fit on the internal with the ones I have installed. I dont like to delete what i have not finished but i know that is an option. I am simply asking if it is possible to let it background transfer while I play something else.

I know the xbox does this, I had to make room on my series s for flight sim and while it was moving 3 games to the external hdd, i was playing dirt 5. I can watch the transfer if i wanted to but it lets me do something else with my time.

i mean sheesh, its a simple question of can you do other things on the ps5 while it is transferring or do you have to sit on that screen until its finished? I never really paid attention to when i transferred them initially as they were one at a time (at different intervals). Be it 10 minutes or 2... if you got to sit there and watch the bar go across, that really sucks.

[IRetrouk]

Think I'm gonna go for the firecuda 530, it's only £200 with a built in heatsink, thats cheaper than the ssd for the xbox at £220, although it's on sale at the moment for between £180-£209, so not a bad price at all, seems to have the fastest read/write speeds for the price too, 7300 read, 6000 write

[kryteris]

Will a gen 3 drive even boot up? there are plenty of goods ones. Top read speed is not the end all be all.

[ocelot07]

"A colleague confirmed a Sabrent Rocket (500GB, rated at 5,000MB/s) seems to do just fine as well"

Well that's good as the 1TB drive can be had for around £130 if you have a look around.

[elazz]

How did it go for Ratchet and Clank? Even then I would still recommend the 7GB/s SSD's

[COS]

Surprised that they didn't have a clear cut expansion plan for their SDD. This seems very much like an afterthought.

[jznrpg]

Obviously they had a plan but the tech wasn’t widely available yet for purchase . It’s not like you can’t use your PS5 without it . They stated before launch SSD will be expandable after launch . They can’t test drives that aren’t available . They wanted to put the best drive they could and they did a great job with it . I’d rather wait then have an older SSD that’s slower . I love the extra time I get when playing games .

[elazz]

During the tech briefing well before the console reveal from Mark cerny they already mentioned that it was coming later as they needed to wait till the pcie 4.0 SSD's would saturate the bandwith. That is currently the case with a lot of models rhat released since end 2020 to now. So it seems all as planned.