Sony has announced a new partnership with Seagate to create a Playstation-branded external hard drive specifically for gamers to use with their games.
Any modern console gamer knows the struggle of managing space on console hard drives. PS4 and Xbox One consoles suffer from a constant starvation for storage space. And with the ever-increasing size of games, heck Red Dead Redemption 2 was 100 GB alone, gamers need more space. Even with the 2TB HDD’s which are now becoming a standard for the PS4, there’s still only so many games you can store on your games console.
According to Sony, this new “Game Drive” features 2TB of storage and is optimized for any version of PlayStation 4, meaning it’s usable on both the launch, Slim, and Pro versions of the console, so as long as you have up-to-date firmware, you’re fine.
Microsoft got out ahead of Sony on this front with an Xbox-branded HDD for their platform a few years back. That was also produced by Seagate, and retails at $89.99 for a 2TB model. This is the same spec that the newly announced PS4 external drive will run, at the same price. This makes it an affordable entry-level addon for a console gamer looking for more storage.
You could also build your own storage solution and get more storage volume at a higher read/write speed, but there’s a premium price attached. Getting a USB 3.0 enclosure and high-speed drives for a RAID array is extremely pricey. There is of course the more affordable premade HDD as an option, although speed will be at best comparable to the Seagate Game Drive, but you will have more storage.
You could of course go nuts and build your own custom DAS array, but that entails a much more expensive setup. Although the speed literally can’t be beat.
So if you’re a budget-conscious PS4 owner, Seagate has you covered with an affordable 2 TB drive for $90.