Seagate Announces External HDDs for PlayStation, Including Horizon Forbidden West Model

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Image: Seagate



Seagate has announced the release of a new line of external hard drives for the PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles. Drive capacities are available in either 2 TB or 4 TB sizes. The drives use USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) connectors and have had their firmware optimized for each generation. Depending on the model, the suggested prices range from $92.49 all the way up to $159.99.



These officially licensed PlayStation console game drives are designed to be plug-and-play with installation taking less than two minutes. Limited-edition Horizon Forbidden West models are also being offered in 2 TB and 5 TB capacities. All models include a one-year limited warranty...

Continue reading...

 

[Grimlakin]

To think if these had a thunderbolt port you could have high speed external drives. It's too bad really.

 

[LazyGamer]

To think if these had a thunderbolt port you could have high speed external drives. It's too bad really.

If you wanted really fast external drives and say 10Gbit networking (for some reason), TB might make sense here.

But even the USB ports mentioned can exceed the speeds of a SATA SSD.

 

[Grimlakin]

If you wanted really fast external drives and say 10Gbit networking (for some reason), TB might make sense here.

But even the USB ports mentioned can exceed the speeds of a SATA SSD.

Honestly I'm thinking external NVME enclosures.

 

[LazyGamer]

Honestly I'm thinking external NVME enclosures.

Sure, but they have those for USB as well, and I've seen mine push >1GB/s. I think though that full-on TB would certainly be preferable given the bandwidth and latency advantage along with lower overhead from not being USB.

Thankfully Zen 4 will have that built in, so perhaps the next console cycle refresh will have TB4 (marked as USB4)?

 

[Grimlakin]

Sure, but they have those for USB as well, and I've seen mine push >1GB/s. I think though that full-on TB would certainly be preferable given the bandwidth and latency advantage along with lower overhead from not being USB.

Thankfully Zen 4 will have that built in, so perhaps the next console cycle refresh will have TB4 (marked as USB4)?

I actually don't see console makers wanting that because it would limit the 'exclusive' internal drive upgrades or storage upgrades that they get some income from today via licensing and such.

While I would LOVE for that to be the case... that would lead to consoles effectively replacing PC's in a lot of households today. Then again many households have phones, tablets, and consoles and not PC's. My wife's Microsoft book laptop thing gets used for a solid 2 weeks every six months after I run a series of updates on it. Other than that it sits forgotten while she uses her ipad and her phone.

 

[LazyGamer]

I actually don't see console makers wanting that because it would limit the 'exclusive' internal drive upgrades or storage upgrades that they get some income from today via licensing and such.

I won't contest that analysis, it's not like we can read their minds - I'd just submit that more space on users' consoles means more games can be run, and that removes the 'I don't have enough space for another game' impediment from game buying decisions.

Realistically they'd have 'tiers' of storage; spinners like in the OP are obviously going to be for 'hibernating' game installs or something similar as they're not fast enough to run games. Might be possible for exceptions to be added for older games, but then again those don't take up much space in the first place.

I'd like to see a performance test where external drives are tested as to what level of game they can support running directly vs. being used as a caching solution.

 

[DrezKill]

Then again many households have phones, tablets, and consoles and not PC's. My wife's Microsoft book laptop thing gets used for a solid 2 weeks every six months after I run a series of updates on it. Other than that it sits forgotten while she uses her ipad and her phone.

That is VERY hard for me to wrap my brain around. If there is a perfectly usable PC available, why in the f*ck would you use a tablet or phone?!?!?!!!

 

[Brian_B]

That is VERY hard for me to wrap my brain around. If there is a perfectly usable PC available, why in the f*ck would you use a tablet or phone?!?!?!!!

For work probably close to 80% of my workload is done entirely on my phone anymore. About the only time I break out the laptop is when I need something in the Office suite, or I need to SSH into a server to tweak something on CLI.

Gaming is on my PC though. I tend to oscillate between PC and console, but the PS4 hasn't been used in a long while; I'm probably just about due to shift back if a game catches me over there, but probably won't be until something worthwhile comes out for PS5 -- and I can find a PS5