Upgrading to SSD's for PS4, an awful choice?

[Jedi2016]

That's a myth.

No, it's not. As I said, it's gotten a lot better, but the underlying issue is still there. I'm not just pulling that out of my ass, either, this is personal and professional experience. It's one thing to put one SSD into a PC, maybe run some Steam games off of it, whatever. It's quite another to run an entire server farm on them, and that's when they start dropping like flies.

I wouldn't go just randomly throwing a SSD into any computer system (console, PC, or server) without first knowing how it's going to be used. There are certain uses that they are not suited for. They work great as OS drives. Not so great for data drives. Which category does the PS4 drive fall under? We don't know.

If all you want is speed, regardless of any other factors, then knock yourself out. A quick look at Newegg shows me a 1TB SSD for PS4 will run you about six hundred bucks. You can pick up a 1TB HDD for less than a hundred. Even if they were ten times more reliable than a HDD, it's just not worth it at that cost.

 

[-tkf-]

Based on what I know of the way the system is constantly caching data to the drives (and I hadn't even thought of the 15-minute video recording it's doing at all times), I would not recommend an SSD. While they have significantly improved the write lifetime of the drives through various methods over the years, they haven't licked it entirely, and it will probably die far sooner than the average HDD in the same circumstances. Is the speed/money tradeoff worth it? Only you can decide.

No, based on the extreme heavy use of a ssd disk in a professional graphic Workstation I would not worry at all. Often filled to the brim, used everyday for work usually more than 10 hours, the wear and tear a ps4 can come up with doesn't matter.

 

[MrFox]

No, it's not. As I said, it's gotten a lot better, but the underlying issue is still there. I'm not just pulling that out of my ass, either, this is personal and professional experience. It's one thing to put one SSD into a PC, maybe run some Steam games off of it, whatever. It's quite another to run an entire server farm on them, and that's when they start dropping like flies.

I wouldn't go just randomly throwing a SSD into any computer system (console, PC, or server) without first knowing how it's going to be used. There are certain uses that they are not suited for. They work great as OS drives. Not so great for data drives. Which category does the PS4 drive fall under? We don't know.

If all you want is speed, regardless of any other factors, then knock yourself out. A quick look at Newegg shows me a 1TB SSD for PS4 will run you about six hundred bucks. You can pick up a 1TB HDD for less than a hundred. Even if they were ten times more reliable than a HDD, it's just not worth it at that cost.

You're spreading FUD here.

I provided a link to lab tests of multiple SSDs, so we have data. What you say doesn't match the data.

The PS4 isn't a database server. We do know the write pattern, it copies the content of the disc entirely, then it stops. It's superb linear writes. Deleting a game is done manually by the user, it's not a cache.
1000 times the capacity of a 1TB SSD will take 20000 full disc installs to get through the SSD.

 

[Phil]

I have a 100GB Corsair SSD in my linux server that gets heavy usage on big files being copied over and away from it. The S.M.A.R.T. attribute currently reads:

9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 23881h+10m+37.880s
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 17920
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 33408

That's 33TiB of reads and 17TiB of writes over its lifespan so far. On a 100Gb drive. The drive has been in use since 23881 hours accoarding to the stat (995 days / 2.7 years).

In other words, 33.5 GiB of reads and 18 GiB of writes per day on average.

I wouldn't expect my PS4 to even have a close to that usage in any practical sense. I'm not too concerned, considering on a PS4, if a failure does occur, the data stored on it (games) can always be re-downloaded.

 

[RudeCurve]

https://twitter.com/yosp/status/373623812681523200

so much for external HDD games install

Ouch...

 

[patsu]

That's why we are talking about replacing the internal HDD.

 

[RudeCurve]

That's why we are talking about replacing the internal HDD.

Well I thought everyone wanted to replace the internal one to get better performance/capacity not because of the recent news that external drives can't be used for games.

 

[patsu]

Well I thought everyone wanted to replace the internal one to get better performance/capacity not because of the recent news that external drives can't be used for games.

PS3 doesn't allow games to be installed on external HDD. I don't know if people are expecting it for PS4.

Personally I am more looking for keeping media and perhaps game installers on the external HDD.


A bigger and faster internal HDD is more useful for PS4 though.

I would be happier if we can mount network drives on PS4.

 

[djskribbles]

Like I said before, I'd rather have the option to replace the internal HDD than install to an external. Deleting and re-installing isn't a big deal on PS4 either. Not to mention this has been known for months now.

 

[novcze]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8_nt2Dwf78#t=15

Looks like installing a SSD will dramatically improve loading times.

Unfortunately it looks like that only in games with heavy HDD seeking, which is case of Resogun as MrFox reported.

We know there is SATA 2.6 limit of 300 MB/s, which is not good when an SSD can do 550 MB/s and it looks like those 300 MB/s are limited by something else to numbers close to standard HDD speed (150MB/s)

 

[Gradthrawn]

Storage Review benchmark for the factory drive (in a PC), just to give an idea as to what the original drive can actually achieve in synthetic benchmarks. Here's another interesting test. Its a 3.5" WD VelociRaptor against a SATA 3 6Gbps SSD drive with the drive controller set to 3 Gbps (the Raptor stays connected at 6 Gbps. They also have the results for the same SSD with the controller set to 6 Gbps as well for comparison's sake. Unfortunately, the fact that its not being tested with an actual SATA2 controller probably influences the results (a newer controller with potentially better performance beyond the raw bandwidth numbers), but its interesting all the same.

 

[dagamer]

PCPerspective did some testing: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/PlayStation-4-PS4-HDD-SSHD-and-SSD-Performance-Testing

It seems there's some improvement, but whether it's worth it if your SSD is only going to be 256GB in size is debatable. 1TB Seagate SSHD showed some improvement, though I think that only having 8GB of cache is really too small to have across the board improvements.

 

[novcze]

PCPerspective did some testing: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/PlayStation-4-PS4-HDD-SSHD-and-SSD-Performance-Testing

It seems there's some improvement, but whether it's worth it if your SSD is only going to be 256GB in size is debatable. 1TB Seagate SSHD showed some improvement, though I think that only having 8GB of cache is really too small to have across the board improvements.

I don't know it they are aware of background caching thing, which isn't transparent at all, they didnt mention it in article.

Why Sony didn't include HDD access LED like on PS3, that bloody USB/SATA bridge have pins for this purpose.

 

[Gitaroo]

can't decide to go SSHD 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm drive. Anyone know if the PS4 has the same kind of system backupo function as the PS3 so you can clone the HDD. The longer I have the system means the hard its going to be to transfer stuffs over to new drive since I keep filling it up with contents.

 

[Gradthrawn]

can't decide to go SSHD 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm drive. Anyone know if the PS4 has the same kind of system backupo function as the PS3 so you can clone the HDD. The longer I have the system means the hard its going to be to transfer stuffs over to new drive since I keep filling it up with contents.

Off the top of my head, I only recall seeing a transfer option to USB and cloud storage for game saves. I'll double check when I get home if no one else answers by then.

 

[MrFox]

Right now (1.50), the only things that can be backed up are the save games. If there's something else I haven't found it.

Disc install are not important considering you're up and running in 5 minutes if you deleted the game data. But they better add an option to backup the downloads, it's a critical feature for those with a bandwidth cap.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

can't decide to go SSHD 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm drive.

I went for 7200rpm although I doubt it's more than a marginal improvement except in some edge cases.

The longer I have the system means the hard its going to be to transfer stuffs over to new drive since I keep filling it up with contents.

The same thought occurred to me, that's why I ordered a big drive for day one installation.

 

[djskribbles]

I also went with a 7200RPM drive. I originally ordered a 1TB 5400RPM WD Blue but I found a better price on an HGST 7K1000. I'm curious how a 7200RPM vs 5400RPM SSHD compare in the PS4.

 

[Grall]

~500GB SSDs are terribly expensive still (compared to much higher capacity HDDs), so when I get my PS4 I'll bite the bullet until the default drive's packed full of junk and then decide what I'll do. If 1TB SSDs cost then what a 500GB SSD costs now, then there's not much point in buying one of those; you'll still pay a crapton and you'll soon fill it up anyways. HDD will likely be the way to go still, in 2.5" form factor, for a number of years anyway.

 

[-tkf-]

~500GB SSDs are terribly expensive still (compared to much higher capacity HDDs), so when I get my PS4 I'll bite the bullet until the default drive's packed full of junk and then decide what I'll do. If 1TB SSDs cost then what a 500GB SSD costs now, then there's not much point in buying one of those; you'll still pay a crapton and you'll soon fill it up anyways. HDD will likely be the way to go still, in 2.5" form factor, for a number of years anyway.

There is 2TB 9.5 mm drives out now, or just around the corner, and i think you are right about the capacity thing, i had a fear that the loading times would be high, but what i have seen so far seems more than fine.

Gonna hold the horse and see how this plays out as well..