Sony plans to unlock PlayStation 5's storage expansion later this year

[Humza]

Something to look forward to: There have been two kinds of waiting for Sony's PlayStation 5. The first is getting your hands on one without paying the scalper fee and the second is being able to increase the console's internal storage by slotting an m.2 drive in the expansion bay. For those in the latter club, the wait will soon be over as Sony reportedly plans to enable this functionality via a firmware update due out this summer.

Unlike Microsoft and its proprietary storage expansion on the Series X|S, Sony went the third-party route with the PlayStation 5 that'll let players choose from a variety of NVMe options as long as they've been certified for use.

While several m.2 SSDs currently available in the market would likely satisfy Sony's compatibility criteria, the actual hardware support will be enabled in the summer via a firmware update, reports Bloomberg. Being able to expand upon the console's 667GB of usable storage space would indeed be among the first upgrades that many gamers would be looking forward to.

The upcoming firmware will also allow the PS5 cooling fans to spin at higher RPMs. While this capability has already been known to exist, Sony will likely boost fan speeds to address thermals once a third-party SSD comes into play.

It's only a matter of a few months until PS5 users will finally be able to load their massive game libraries. This wait, however, is a small inconvenience in the face of game delays, scalpers, and production constraints that'll likely be sticking around for longer.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88758-sony-plans-unlock-playstation-5-storage-expansion-later.html

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Finally.. have only been waiting for this since day one. Sucks to be having to remove and download the same games over and over again depending on which one my son wants to play.

 

[Adhmuz]

Finally.. have only been waiting for this since day one. Sucks to be having to remove and download the same games over and over again depending on which one my son wants to play.

Not to mention the unnecessary wear and tear that puts on the built in NAND chips.

 

[LuckyMenace]

Not to mention the unnecessary wear and tear that puts on the built in NAND chips.

While I agree with the science of that statement, we are talking about taking something from a theoretical 100 year life span for the typical user down to 75 years... hardly the biggest reason to need more storage...

 

[umbala]

While I agree with the science of that statement, we are talking about taking something from a theoretical 100 year life span for the typical user down to 75 years... hardly the biggest reason to need more storage...

Your numbers are complete nonsense. There's no SSD on the planet that will last 75-100 years. Perhaps you should try Googling some info on SSD lifespan. They can wear out fairly quickly when the whole drive is re-written over and over on a regular basis.

 

[NumberSix]

Dunno why they don't just open it up for all M.2 NVMe drives and let us put up with the slower read/writes that the cheaper PCIe 3.0 drives offer.

 

[LuckyMenace]

Your numbers are complete nonsense. There's no SSD on the planet that will last 75-100 years. Perhaps you should try Googling some info on SSD lifespan. They can wear out fairly quickly when the whole drive is re-written over and over on a regular basis.

A WD SN850 2TB is rated for 1,200 TBW (Total TB written over time). If you install a 200GB game once a week, it would take you (1,200 x 1,000)/(200x52)=115.4 years to wear out the NAND. Obvious the physical integrity will break before that number would be reached, but to say wearing out a NVMe over the course of regular use is nonsense.

 

[3volv3d]

A WD SN850 2TB is rated for 1,200 TBW (Total TB written over time). If you install a 200GB game once a week, it would take you (1,200 x 1,000)/(200x52)=115.4 years to wear out the NAND. Obvious the physical integrity will break before that number would be reached, but to say wearing out a NVMe over the course of regular use is nonsense.

Although your maths again isn't on the money. The console doesn't sleep and like Steam and Operating systems, updates, page files, hidden system bs, your items are on a constant read write.
Just sayin, as Samsungs pro evo ssd's were smashing when tested the life expectancy sure, but I still would worry about the general fall over rate of any storage.
That being said, 667gb of storage comes with the ps5, that alone would have me holding out on a better build, I will wait for the pro.
And it seems the disc version for sales is defintely the way to go.

 

[neeyik]

It would be interesting to know exactly what NAND flash the PS5 is using. I know iFixit's teardown shows 6 chips and they, like others, are suggesting it's Kioxia. So 825 GB split six ways comes to 137.5 GB per chip. That's pretty small, considering that the flash chips used in their 2 TB NVMe SSDs are 256 GB. In fact, it's the 'wrong size' to be any of Kioxia's chips, as their storage scales by orders of 2.

One explanation is that they're 256 GB TLC or QLC modules using an enormous amount of overprovisioning (44%!) to improve the longevity of them; and given how frequently games are going to be written/deleted from them, this would make sense.

 

[Hardware Geek]

Finally was able to snag one the other day and already have the drive over half full, so I'm looking forward to being able to install more storage.

 

[yukka]

My series X has 750Gb usable space after the OS on the internal drive. Hopefully this is successful enough for Sony that Microsoft allow other nVME drives to be used for expansion. The Seagate 1Tb for £200 is too much.

 

[kissx]

My Rule. Wait 2 years. work this stuff out.

 

[Puiu]

It would be interesting to know exactly what NAND flash the PS5 is using. I know iFixit's teardown shows 6 chips and they, like others, are suggesting it's Kioxia. So 825 GB split six ways comes to 137.5 GB per chip. That's pretty small, considering that the flash chips used in their 2 TB NVMe SSDs are 256 GB. In fact, it's the 'wrong size' to be any of Kioxia's chips, as their storage scales by orders of 2.

One explanation is that they're 256 GB TLC or QLC modules using an enormous amount of overprovisioning (44%!) to improve the longevity of them; and given how frequently games are going to be written/deleted from them, this would make sense.

The over-provisioning could be a result of the really fast direct access games have to the drive. It's not just for improving longevity, but to improve the cache size which in turn allows the drive to run at high speeds for longer (the games should never be able fill the cache of the drive, something which massively degrades performance).

tl;dr: almost instant ingame asset load times come at a cost.

 

[pildorman321]

A con with no stock. No games. No space to install games. No ssd expansion. No controller. (breaks) not a chance in hell from me Sony.

 

[Puiu]

A con with no stock. No games. No space to install games. No ssd expansion. No controller. (breaks) not a chance in hell from me Sony.

Even with low stocks it still outsold the Xbox by quite a lot. It seems stocks are starting to stabilise in my country, even though it's selling at an inflated price (it's available at multiple stores)

As for games, you have them, that's not a problem. Space is the only issue if are the type to install many games, but you can wait for a bit longer until you can install a new drive in it.

The issue with the controller is known, but nobody seems to have a general idea of how wide-spread it is (percentage wise) and it seems that after being replace by warranty people are saying that it's working fine after extended usage.

 

[Danny101]

It never made sense to block it to begin with.