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[Shwing]

Now we know the ins & outs of the PS5 storage expansion, I wonder if it will be possible to add a PCIe 3.0 nvme drive into the bay, but use it purely for running PS4 games as well as storing PS5 games (ready to transfer over to PCIe 4.0 built in drive when wanting to use)?
Will the PS5 flat out reject anything but a PCIe 4.0 drive, or will it just show it up as 'standard' storage space?
Like many people I intend to plug an external USB drive into PS5 to use for PS4 titles, but as I have a spare PCIe 3.0 drive lying about, it would be faster & neater to use that.

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[FrankWza]

I would say that would be it’s only function. But I’m guessing if it’s nvme they’ll make it compatible to avoid confusion.
At least until faster drives come out and Sony possibly pushes an update to allow PS5 games to be played off of the newer drives. It probably won’t be for a while though. That will help clear thing up and draw a line for consumers. Nvme below 1 spec for storage and above as a stock drive alternative

 

[ZywyPL]

PCIE standard is both forward and backward compatible, so logically there should't be any issues at all, those games shoud run straight from the SSD. with greatly improved loading times.

 

[Xdrive05]

I thought the implication from Cerny's comments on this topic was that the PS5 would have some way of positively rejecting unapproved drives? And then the speculation on that is there is probably a benchmark utility in the PS5 that will test your drive to approve it for use or not. That way there is some QC to make sure your storage choice is appropriate for PS5 performance requirements.

No one knows for sure yet, and that is part of the problem. We need that deep dive on the OS and UI options to see how exactly they QC for that.

In theory you're not wrong - that a slower SSD would be great for backwards compatibility use, but I'm sure they want your added SSD to be PS5 compliant for PS5 games.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Wouldn't you rather just use what they suggest and spend the extra money?

 

[FrankWza]

I thought the implication from Cerny's comments on this topic was that the PS5 would have some way of positively rejecting unapproved drives? And then the speculation on that is there is probably a benchmark utility in the PS5 that will test your drive to approve it for use or not. That way there is some QC to make sure your storage choice is appropriate for PS5 performance requirements.

No one knows for sure yet, and that is part of the problem. We need that deep dive on the OS and UI options to see how exactly they QC for that.

In theory you're not wrong - that a slower SSD would be great for backwards compatibility use, but I'm sure they want your added SSD to be PS5 compliant for PS5 games.

I read OP this way too but I edited because I think he just means for storage and swapping games back and forth of a 3.0 at least and if we can play PS4 games off of either.There is no drive available now that can be used to play PS5 games off of. Any nvme drive you use as additional storage will be just storage at this point or maybe a few other functions besides playing PS5 games off of. The question was whether or not the 3.0 would be compatible or does it need to be 4.0 at a minimum.

 

[Neofire]

Thought about this myself, will need a very fast external hard drive for all my ps4 games to be on.

 

[FrankWza]

Thought about this myself, will need a very fast external hard drive for all my ps4 games to be on.

I’m thinking that by the time I finish DeS remake, MM ultimate anda couple of PS4 games I’m holding for PS5 all of this will be cleared up and I’ll wait for the drive that will end up being able to play PS5 games and everything else. I put a 500gb SSD in my PS4 at launch last gen and it moved into my PRO and I never had an issue with just deleting games when I was done. But I’m mostly disc so...

 

[Neofire]

I’m thinking that by the time I finish DeS remake, MM ultimate anda couple of PS4 games I’m holding for PS5 all of this will be cleared up and I’ll wait for the drive that will end up being able to play PS5 games and everything else. I put a 500gb SSD in my PS4 at launch last gen and it moved into my PRO and I never had an issue with just deleting games when I was done. But I’m mostly disc so...

I'm going to wait til the ps5 releases for a few months and look around and see what the best options are for a external HDD for it and go from there.

 

[KingT731]

I read OP this way too but I edited because I think he just means for storage and swapping games back and forth of a 3.0 at least and if we can play PS4 games off of either.There is no drive available now that can be used to play PS5 games off of. Any nvme drive you use as additional storage will be just storage at this point or maybe a few other functions besides playing PS5 games off of. The question was whether or not the 3.0 would be compatible or does it need to be 4.0 at a minimum.

It needs to meet the PS5 standards. This is why Cerny said they publish a list of compatible drives. If it doesn't meet the standard you can't pay PS5 games from it... same reason you can't play PS5 games on an external drive

 

[FrankWza]

It needs to meet the PS5 standards. This is why Cerny said they publish a list of compatible drives. If it doesn't meet the standard you can't pay PS5 games from it... same reason you can't play PS5 games on an external drive

I think you misunderstood. You won’t be able to play PS5 games off of any drives for a while. This is about the nvme standard that’s compatible as storage and or playing PS4 games from and4.0 being the minimum requirement for that or 3.0 having some sort of functionality in a PS5.

 

[MisterXDTV]

For storage/backup it's way cheaper to use a SATA SSD via USB.

PS5 has 10 gbps USB ports

 

[ethomaz]

There are two possible results...

1) The OS will see the slower driver and not run PS5 games from it (you can do everything else like run PS4 games, backup PS5 games, backup saves, etc).

2) The PS5 games will run but way slower and with even some with logic issues when in slower SSDs.

For storage/backup it's way cheaper to use a SATA SSD via USB.

PS5 has 10 gbps USB ports

10Gbps is still around 1.2GB/s.
A "slower" PCI-E 3.0 SSD drive will still be way faster.

 

[MisterXDTV]

There are two possible results...

1) The OS will see the slower driver and not run PS5 games from it (you can do everything else like run PS4 games, backup PS5 games, backup saves, etc).

2) The PS5 games will run but way slower and with even some with logic issues when in slower SSDs.


10Gbps is still around 1.2GB/s.
A "slower" PCI-E 3.0 SSD drive will still be way faster.

It will be faster but more expensive. A standard 2.5" SATA SSD is more than enough for backup and PS4 games that were designed for HDD

 

[LordOfChaos]

That's a good question we won't know the answer to until they answer or it's tested. They said there's a way for it to blacklist SSDs that are too slow for PS5 games, but I'm not sure if it would still let you use it as archive/PS4 media.

 

[M1chl]

PCIE standard is both forward and backward compatible, so logically there should't be any issues at all, those games shoud run straight from the SSD. with greatly improved loading times.

Well this is the thinking with PC in mind, there is no stopping Sony of blocking this, because then people on the internet might shit on bad performance.

 

[IntentionalPun]

We don't know what the OS does yet...

Sony just refuses to really detail shit like this lol

Like Cerny gave a ton of info in Feb and then we waited until a few days ago and we got a 2 second shot of the drive bay and had to zoom to figure out what sizes actually seem to fit lol

 

[iHaunter]

Pretty sure PCI is backward compatible all the way to PCI-E 1.0 no? PCI-E 3 should work no problem for older games I would imagine. I wonder if Sony OS is designed not to read 3.0 as readable storage. Doubt it though!

 

[ZywyPL]

Well this is the thinking with PC in mind, there is no stopping Sony of blocking this, because then people on the internet might shit on bad performance.

Technically there is a slight chance that Sony might not allow to run any drive that's below PCIE4, but I don't think they'd do that, and even if, I expect the customers outrage will force them to enable PCIE3 compatibility via FW update in no time.

 

[FrankWza]

There are two possible results...

1) The OS will see the slower driver and not run PS5 games from it (you can do everything else like run PS4 games, backup PS5 games, backup saves, etc).

2) The PS5 games will run but way slower and with even some with logic issues when in slower SSDs.

i feel confident sayingtheres no chance of 2 happening

 

[M1chl]

Technically there is a slight chance that Sony might not allow to run any drive that's below PCIE4, but I don't think they'd do that, and even if, I expect the customers outrage will force them to enable PCIE3 compatibility via FW update in no time.

Well since they said, that they will put some certification sticker onto which drives are going to work. I somewhat doubt that it's going to be case (BC that is)...

 

[Shwing]

Thanks for all the replies.

Just to confirm, what I'm referring to is putting a spare nvme ssd 500GB drive that I have (therefore it's not cheaper going for another option - as I already have this drive) into the PS5 storage expansion bay.
I know you won't be able to run PS5 games direct from it, but I wondered if you could play legacy PS4 games as well as using it as a PS5 game 'reserve' (so you just transfer any PS5 games you have sitting there onto the built in ssd prior to playing).

 

[Black_Stride]

Thanks for all the replies.

Just to confirm, what I'm referring to is putting a spare nvme ssd 500GB drive that I have (therefore it's not cheaper going for another option - as I already have this drive) into the PS5 storage expansion bay.
I know you won't be able to run PS5 games direct from it, but I wondered if you could play legacy PS4 games as well as using it as a PS5 game 'reserve' (so you just transfer any PS5 games you have sitting there onto the built in ssd prior to playing).

It will show up as a none PS5 game boot drive as if it was an external USB drive so you are fine. As long as you arent planning on using it for PS5 games to boot off.

I actually think the NVme even a first gen 4 or gen 3 will yield better results for back compat than an external drive.
So people with spare M.2s def should use the slot for that till they feel the need to get a Final Gen4 to boot off.

 

[RoadHazard]

It will show up as a none PS5 game boot drive as if it was an external USB drive so you are fine.

We don't know that. The PS5 might simply reject SSDs that are not up to spec.

 

[kikonawa]

There are two possible results...

1) The OS will see the slower driver and not run PS5 games from it (you can do everything else like run PS4 games, backup PS5 games, backup saves, etc).

2) The PS5 games will run but way slower and with even some with logic issues when in slower SSDs.


10Gbps is still around 1.2GB/s.
A "slower" PCI-E 3.0 SSD drive will still be way faster.

i believe the added storage will be benchmarked , if it passes the test, it will be available for ps5 games

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Now we know the ins & outs of the PS5 storage expansion, I wonder if it will be possible to add a PCIe 3.0 nvme drive into the bay, but use it purely for running PS4 games as well as storing PS5 games (ready to transfer over to PCIe 4.0 built in drive when wanting to use)?
Will the PS5 flat out reject anything but a PCIe 4.0 drive, or will it just show it up as 'standard' storage space?
Like many people I intend to plug an external USB drive into PS5 to use for PS4 titles, but as I have a spare PCIe 3.0 drive lying about, it would be faster & neater to use that.

Anyone have any thoughts?

My thoughts are that it is a pointless question. At that point just spend trhe extra $ and buy a 4.0 version and fully utilize it. There isn't a huge price premium between 3.0 and 4.0.

 

[Black_Stride]

We don't know that. The PS5 might simply reject SSDs that are not up to spec.

Id be willing to avatar bet.
And I love my CatWoman.

If the NVme is too slow, it will still work as cold storage....if its fast enough it can be used for actual PS5 game booting.

There is no logical reason for them to allow USB drives but not allow NVme drives in the slot.

Sony arent stupid and they have seemingly worked their asses off putting this thing together.

 

[Great Hair]

Pretty sure the console will format, bench it and let the user know :

• "This NVMe drive is not PS5 compatible, for BC titles&PS5 backups only"
• "This NVMe drive is PS5 compatible"

 

[daninthemix]

I've been told the PS5's SSD speed is so transformative that if you try and use a PCI3.0 drive, whatever you're playing will essentially reverse engineer itself to a vestigial state - something like ET on the Atari 2600.

 

[RoadHazard]

I've been told the PS5's SSD speed is so transformative that if you try and use a PCI3.0 drive, whatever you're playing will essentially reverse engineer itself to a vestigial state - something like ET on the Atari 2600.

This is correct.

 

[CircleOfFire]

That sounds unlikely to me personally, they'd be adding some conditional functionality that probably very few people are going to benefit from.