Sony PlayStation 4 Is Finally Adding Support For External Hard Drive (playstation.com)

The Sony PlayStation 4's next system update, out now for beta testers, will allow users to connect an external USB hard drive. From company's blog post: It's easy to upgrade the HDD that came with your PS4, but if you're still looking for more storage space on the console, we've got you covered. With this update, you have the option to store content to an external HDD. Just plug a USB 3.0 HDD into your PS4, and voila, you now have more space on the console.

Comments

So...

[DontBeAMoran]

I predict comments about how someone is never buying anything from Sony ever again because "other OS" for the PS3, CD rootkit fiasco, memory stick instead of SD, beta instead of VHS, etc. Pointless rant that dozens of people will reply to, one of which will include movies released by Sony.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessary. Thankfully, they seem to be doing a great job of wrecking their own company themselves:

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/01/sony-takes-977m-writedown-movies-have-been-flops-dvds-sales-falling/

Re: So...

[tepples]

And im still pissed over betamax

Why? Without the ruling in Sony v. Universal that found Betamax recorders legal to sell in the United States, there would be no VCR, no DVR, and probably not even camcorders for the amateur market.

Re:So...

[spire3661]

The OtherOS issue permanently affected what i buy from Sony. I still have my full phat ps3, and i still have the HDD with PPC Yellow Dog Linux on it.

Re: So...

[spire3661]

Not only that, Sony v. Universal set the standard of 'a backup is a backup is a backup, its origin is irrelevant.'.

Re:Just kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it existential Friday again already?

captcha: churchly

Always assumed

[The-Ixian]

I just assumed that the reason external drives were forbidden in the first place was for copy protection and to make it harder to hack save game data.

As far as I am aware (and I am not aware of much in this area) some of the more notorious hacks for PS games are from people exporting save game data on older systems to external hard drives then cracking it and re-importing.

Re:Always assumed

[RogueyWon]

I don't think that's likely to be the case with the PS4. You can already remove the hard drive from the machine pretty easily (and replacing the hard drive is an officially authorised modification that doesn't void your warranty). PS4 hard drives, like PS3 hard drives before them, use an encrypted structure that locks content to the console in question. I'm guessing there will be a requirement to format any external hard drives used in the same way.

This, incidentally, means it is really important to keep backups (cloud or USB stick) of your PS3/PS4 saves. If your console fails, you will not just be able to stick the drive from it into a replacement console or a PC and get the data off it. Happened to me with my old PS3. Lost five years worth of savegame data.

Re:Always assumed

[LeftCoastThinker]

It is almost as trivial to pull the hard drive out of a PS4 if you are a hacker, the root problem is the 2TB limit on laptop hard drives vs. the storage needed for the modern consoles. Hacking was never the issue, I think the concern was more related to game performance and/or they just didn't think anyone would ever need more storage (which is obviously stupid).

Re:Always assumed

[avandesande]

Most game are network now and your 'stuff' is online, so hacking the game isn't nearly as fun.

Finally

[LeftCoastThinker]

Glad to see they are finally fixing this. This was really the one problem that I had with the PS4. The day after I bought my PS4 I upgraded it to a 2TB internal laptop drive, but with every game taking up 40GB plus, it is not that hard to fill up a drive that big, and indeed I recently ran out of space. Contrast this with my Xbone, which I think is the loser in this generation, but at least with Xbone I was able to plug in a 5TB USB3 external drive and was good to go.