General external expansion discussion? *spawn*

[BRiT]

One of my future setups will be a Series X console with the following USB 3.1 Gen 1 external drives migrated from a One X (I already have these):

• 2 TB SSD
• 4 TB HDD 3.5" HGST 7200 rpm

I am tempted to purchase another 2TB SSD (Samsung QVO) for $200.

Can someone talk some sense into me about this and convince me its best to wait and I already have things covered with my current drives?

 

[Nisaaru]

One of my future setups will be a Series X consolewith the following USB 3.1 Gen 1 external drives migrated from a One X.

• 2 TB SSD
• 4 TB HDD 3.5" HGST 7200 rpm

I am tempted to purchase another 2TB SSD (Samsung QVO) for $200.

Can someone talk some sense into me about this and convince me its best to wait and I already have things covered with my current drives?

I only have 1TB SSD(3-5 quick load games)+2TB 2.5 and there's still space on them. I delete most Xbox Live freebies, especially old 360 games. If you really need older titles you can reload them. So I'm not really pressed to buy more atm.

 

[orangpelupa]

One of my future setups will be a Series X consolewith the following USB 3.1 Gen 1 external drives migrated from a One X.

• 2 TB SSD
• 4 TB HDD 3.5" HGST 7200 rpm

I am tempted to purchase another 2TB SSD (Samsung QVO) for $200.

Can someone talk some sense into me about this and convince me its best to wait and I already have things covered with my current drives?

make sure that HGST not use SMR, as SMR drive can crawl to 10MB/s for continuous transfer. not a problem for most home use, but for game backup from internal SSD to external HDD it may result in prolonged copy process. But if no plan to backup internal SSD to external HDD, and only use the external HDD for back compat games, should be no issues at all with SMR.

edit: a table https://hddscan.com/blog/2020/hdd-wd-smr.html

 

[BRiT]

Its not SMR, this 4GB HGST 7200 rpm drive was from my NAS years before SMR was a thing. I used it for xbox when I upgraded to 8TB drives on NAS.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Can someone talk some sense into me about this and convince me its best to wait and I already have things covered with my current drives?

No, do it! I'm going with a 4Tb external SSD for the PS5 (approx 2Tb for the PS4 games I never delete and 2Tb backup space for PS5 games) and hold out on the NVMe as long as possible. I have no back catalog for Xbox so the Series X so that need is less urgent and I have a spare 4Tb HDD if push comes to shove.

 

[BRiT]

No, do it! I'm going with a 4Tb external SSD for the PS5 (approx 2Tb for the PS4 games I never delete and 2Tb backup space for PS5 games) and hold out on the NVMe as long as possible. I have no back catalog for Xbox so the Series X so that need is less urgent and I have a spare 4Tb HDD if push comes to shove.

So I see Samsung is having a little bit of a sale on their drives as it seems to be the same price everywhere. Looking at 4TB drives on Amazon, I see the 870 QVO and 860 EVO. I don't need the EVO over the QVO. Talk me out of the EVO and that the difference in price of $70 is better spent elsewhere. The only time write performance comes into the picture is during initial copying of the games to it and most all fall under the write performance ranges of 76 GB, or downloads would happen to take long enough to not be impacted by this.

QVO:

• $429
• QLC
• 3 year warranty
• 1440 TBW

EVO:

• $499
• TLC
• 5 year warranty
• 2400 TBW

Technical details about TurboWrite Cache @ https://thepcenthusiast.com/samsung-870-qvo-vs-860-qvo-and-evo-sata-ssd/

---

However, Samsung has a trick called Intelligent TurboWrite technology. Thanks to this technology, the Samsung’s QLC-based SSD is able to achieve SLC or TLC-level of performance. But for a limited size only, depending on the capacity of the drive’s TurboWrite size.

Below is a table showing each SSD series’ total TurboWrite size and the next graph shows the performance of the drive after the TurboWrite allocation has been exhausted. The total TurboWrite is the sum of the SLC buffer (typically 6GB or less) and the “Intelligent” TurboWrite region ranges from 36GB to 72GB on a 1TB to 4TB SSD capacity.

As you can see from the table above, after the total TurboWrite allocation has been exhausted, the sequential write speed drops. The Samsung 860 EVO doesn’t seem to be affected much after the cache has been exhausted. However, we can see a significant drop on the 870 QVO and 860 QVO’s write speed after TurboWrite.

That drop is really significant, to the point that after the cache has been exhausted, it almost feels like you are copying files to a hard disk drive rather than an SSD. Yes, that was my experience when I transferred my game folder, with a size of almost 1TB, to a Samsung 860 EVO SSD.​

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So I see Samsung is having a little bit of a sale on their drives as it seems to be the same price everywhere. Looking at 4TB drives on Amazon, I see the 870 QVO and 860 EVO. I don't need the EVO over the QVO. Talk me out of the EVO and that the difference in price of $70 is better spent elsewhere. The only time write performance comes into the picture is during initial copying of the games to it and most all fall under the write performance ranges of 76 GB, or downloads would happen to take long enough to not be impacted by this.

This is entirely the swing factor of my choosing QVO over EVO. The initial copy is a one-off then every update is at a pace vastly slower then the maximum write speed of the drive. Nothing I've seen from the tests of Xbox Series X external SSD speeds made me thinking of spending more and I don't see PS5 being any different. If I was looking to spend more, I would have invested in larger rather than faster but $70 gets you nothing in this regard

 

[mrcorbo]

No, do it! I'm going with a 4Tb external SSD for the PS5 (approx 2Tb for the PS4 games I never delete and 2Tb backup space for PS5 games) and hold out on the NVMe as long as possible. I have no back catalog for Xbox so the Series X so that need is less urgent and I have a spare 4Tb HDD if push comes to shove.

According to this you can't use external storage for PS5 games, even as "cold storage". Is this correct?

https://www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/you-cant-store-ps5-games-on-an-external-drive/1100-6484139

 

[chris1515]

According to this you can't use external storage for PS5 games, even as "cold storage". Is this correct?

https://www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/you-cant-store-ps5-games-on-an-external-drive/1100-6484139

This is true at launch or at least in the current firmware, same with internal SSD. I suppose all this will be patch ASAP.

 

[mrcorbo]

This is true at launch or at least in the current firmware, same with internal SSD. I suppose all this will be patch ASAP.

The delay of internal SSD support I get. But why were they not able to fully implement external storage at launch? It has been a basic, core, feature in consoles for some time now. It shouldn't be something they need to figure out how to do.

And to be clear, this shouldn't be a big deal at launch since I don't expect many to fill the internal storage with games right away, I'm just genuinely curious why this isn't implemented yet from a technical standpoint. What was so hard about it that aftee all this development time it's still not done?

 

[BRiT]

The delay of internal SSD support I get. But why were they not able to fully implement external storage at launch? It has been a basic, core, feature in consoles for some time now. It shouldn't be something they need to figure out how to do.

And to be clear, this shouldn't be a big deal at launch since I don't expect many to fill the internal storage with games right away, I'm just genuinely curious why this isn't implemented yet from a technical standpoint. What was so hard about it that aftee all this development time it's still not done?

There's so many things that don't seem to be implemented or enabled on the PS5 that I am genuinely surprised. I expected so much more to be working already.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The delay of internal SSD support I get. But why were they not able to fully implement external storage at launch? It has been a basic, core, feature in consoles for some time now. It shouldn't be something they need to figure out how to do.

The internal PS5 NVME filesystem may be different to the extended format used by USB devices. This could necessitate some abstraction or virtualised filesystem.

 

[chris1515]

The internal PS5 NVME filesystem may be different to the extended format used by USB devices. This could necessitate some abstraction or virtualised filesystem.

Into the PS5 SSD patent they said they use a special format for SSD system.

 

[JPT]

I am eagerly waiting for the first videos of "I bought N games and now there is no more room on my Next-Gen console to download anymore, bohooo. Please click on my add kthzby"

 

[mrcorbo]

The internal PS5 NVME filesystem may be different to the extended format used by USB devices. This could necessitate some abstraction or virtualised filesystem.

About the only scenario I can think of that wouldn't already have to be already working just for the system to even function is moving a game's data off the PS5 internal drive onto an external drive. Getting data into the SSD filesystem from whatever source it's coming from, including installing PS4 games from disc, would already have to be done, no?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Into the PS5 SSD patent they said they use a special format for SSD system.

There you go then. They're not using any new format for the external drive which uses the same format that was used by PS4.

 

[mpg1]

How would installing from a physical disc or even downloading from the store be any different? ...those are "externally stored" and then transferred to the internal...same thing.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

How would installing from a physical disc or even downloading from the store be any different? ...those are "externally stored" and then transferred to the internal...same thing.

Because the way data is packaged on a disc or server for installation on PS5's NVME drive will be completely different to the state the game is in once installed on the NVME drive.

 

[mpg1]

Because the way data is packaged on a disc or server for installation on PS5's NVME drive will be completely different to the state the game is in once installed on the NVME drive.

What's preventing the same process using a personal external drive?...

Edit: Only thing I can think of is the security of the process hasn't be fleshed out yet to use on personal drives....or Sony just doesn't really care about the option and assumes most will used the internal storage expansion.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What's preventing the same process using a personal external drive?...

What process? Sony are very likely packaging their PS5 games using a variation of the fast install install they used on PS4, i.e. to allow the game to be playable before the whole game gas been downloaded/installed. This means the game package is quite complex. You can't just take a pre-installed game and retro-archive back like it used to be when first installed it - you need dev tools for this. You'll have to settle for archiving the live install into some kind of package/container and dumping it as is on the external drive. You ideally still want it to accessible so that it can be updated so when you copy it back to the NVME, it's ready to go.

This is a lot more complicated.