How to Upgrade Your PS4 Hard Drive with Knives

Paging @mb. Get in here and give us the hard factiness about what brands of hard drives are kickass.

@brendan said:

I think I'm recalling this comparison, specifically. Admittedly, it may have colored my opinion of all Seagate hard drives.

I would love a Tool Time with Brad and Dan show as premium content! My current job is largely maintenance and repair of arcade machines, so I'm already pretty technically knowledgeable, but I loved watching Brad explain to Dan basic things like pressing your finger against the screw once you've got it on the screwdriver.

I should do this.

I also need to upgrade my PS3 for all those backlogged PS+ games, but don't know how to transfer stuff. Someone help!

@vinny: Don't give Dan too much to think about.

@brendan: The backseating that goes on with tech is as bad as on a Hearthstone stream. The comments on, say, a LinusTechTips video are painful to read.

Oh but you're so close to Rowsdower levels of awesome.

If you do get a haircut we need a commemorative t-shirt of your current mane!

Is this that Jamie and Adam site?

More content like this!

@brad: Haircuts are overrated.

@geirr: Rowsdower!

This all stems from a misleading, or rather misinterpreted, article from Backblaze in 2014. A good analysis is here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089464/three-year-27-000-drive-study-reveals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html

"...The worst of the bunch, meanwhile was the 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda Green (ST1500DL003), with an average lifespan of 0.8 years. Ouch!

Backblaze said this particular model is pretty bad, but it cautions not to read too much into it. The company received these specific drives as warranty replacements, so they were probably refurbished with wear and tear on them by the time they met Backblaze’s HDD taskmasters."

I think for a home PC or in PS4 a Seagate would do just fine. Also, if you want a Hybrid drive for your PS4 (and -yes- you do), you don't have a ton of choices. The choice you had three years ago are the same today and nobody is moving the needle much on specs each year.


To be honest the gains of a SSHD are not really that large, like I said NOBODY is moving teh performance needle on SSHD so what you could buy 12 months ago and what you can by 12 months from now will be...THE SAME.

Given that, I'm choosing to just erase games I don't play off my PS4. I'm waiting for Seagate and Toshiba or even Hitachi to come out with better tech. They could be in 2017 it could be in 2018, it just likely won't be sooner. If you want bigger drive get a Seagate 2TB, they are reasonable in price and will give a few seconds boost in loads. However, if you want something with huge gains in performance...it ain't out yet...it might never be out in something that fits in a PS4.

Good god one of these videos, it's going to happen - Dan is going to irreversibly cut himself badly on video.

I'd say the inexpensive one recommended in the video is fine. It's only a PS4, you don't really want to be spending too much money upgrading it.

Yep, that is indeed the article I was thinking of. Thanks for the details.

Yeah hockey! Who's your team? Let's go Rangers!

Damn, I just did this two weeks ago except I got the bare drive. I should've done a little more research.

All Hard Drives fail, that's just a fact regardless of the brand.

@brendan: There was range of Seagate hard drives out 3 or 4 years ago that had 14% failure rate after 1 year, But they still got 4 to 5 star review.

You can never trust public reviews on hard drives alone its really easy make fake reviews and also most people rate hard drive moment they get it rather then after year which is more of an important milestone in reliability. So really cant trust reviews unless there done by professional tech analyst, And they all have pretty bad things to say about Seagate production standards.

The best advice when buying hard drive is to check pc building forums they live to answer questions on pc builds and will never steer you wrong.

But if looking for a cheap hard drive and don't mind it having short life span then Seagate way to go.

"It's pretty much fool-proof at this point" "Sounds like a challenge" hahahahaha that may be my favorite line so far of GB in 2015.

Ask yourself this: Would you let Dan handle a knife?

@brad: Join the (willing) bald head club! We're always welcoming new members.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Brad has Joey The Knife since the first office. That thing is the most underappreciated part of Giant Bomb's lore.

@shatteringlast: growing up it was the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim because of the movies, then in 2001 a friend took me to a Blackhawks game and we sat 3rd row off the ice. I switched then (also made more sense being that I'm in central IL). Of course the following year the Ducks win the conference and a few years later, the cup haha.

I'm hoping for a Hawks/Rangers cup final this year since it should have happened last year.

At this point I feel like the hair cutting needs to be a premium feature ORRRRR a stretch goal for your Extra Life stream this year.

More importantly, Dan learns how a folding knife works.

There's a Samsung harddrive in that Seagate enclosure?!?

If only you could do this with a Wii U, instead I have to have a HDD dragging behind it wherever it goes.

I did not know there could be a safe mode in consoles.

To be fair not all pocket knives lock open. I have a cheap tiny one that just closes by pushing down on the blade a little bit until you get passed some amount of spring tension.

Dan doesn't seem like a guy who has used a lot of tools in his day either.

The part where you get the other hard drive back in the enclosure is pretty cool. Now you can use it for your Xbox One for maximum lulz. I wonder how Mr. Xbox feels when it seems PS4 firmware on this drive plugged into him.

Is that a 5400RPM drive or a 7200RPM? I know most laptop drives tend to be 5400RPM, but they do come in the faster speed which may help load times a bit.

They are funny XD
I'd like to drink a beer with them, dunno about DIY-ing though.
The part of putting a HDD into the PS4 is just as simple as with a PC, btw. Especially if you got a fancy case (always get a fancy case) you will have plenty of space and good cable management so nothing gets in the way.

Was Mario Party there on purpose?

But keep the beard.

This needs to be a series. "If Dan can do it, you can too!"

I recommend this 1TB hybrid drive. Load times on Bloodborne are better for me than what everyone is reporting:

amazon link

Also, really happy to see that Mario Party 4 case.

should do a video for the xb1 where dan plugs in an external

I always like to show my sister when someone gives Dan a knife. She can't look at it for reasons that are known :)

Brad is attempting to "off" Dan with a workplace accident! OH NO!

@brad: Is it possible to move the installed games over to the new drive? Or does that all need to be re-downloaded?

How about the game save data?

I did this a few weeks back using the same guide. It's super easy and well worth the effort.

Long hair brad forever!

Except the only Seagate HDD that failed on me was a 7+ year old 500 GB one which I constantly erase (at least 3-7 passes) stuff on =]

So the price difference between the internal and external drive is primarily due to the warranty difference. The external only has a one year (which you void when you open the enclosure) and the internal drive has a 2-year. I think it's worth the $30 to keep the warranty.

@brad, I wanted to let you know that we've been using these same hard drives on our Xbox One stations at our LAN center since around Thanksgiving, and they've been fantastic. Newegg typically has them on sale a lot of times (especially the 3TB version), so it shouldn't be too hard for people to find.

The reason I tagged you is because I'm curious if you could do this same thing for the Xbox One. I don't know if you could actually replace that with it or not.

Maybe worth to put a footnote in the description that as soon as you disconnect the old PS4 hard-drive, you cannot re-connect it without wiping the contents of it and re-installing it. The PS4 immediately treats it as a new drive if it's been disconnected so make sure you back up your stuff first.

Isn't it a bad idea to use magnetic tipped screwdrivers on a hard drive?

Son of a....I just did this when Bloodborne came out and I payed $125 total for the same drive and pretty much the same usb drive device. Oh well.

dan playing with knives is like nascar racing, sure you don't want anything bad to happen but you just can't look away

Nice little PSA. Though, don't buy Seagate drives. Get a WD or a Hitachi, instead, as they're proven to have better lifespans than Seagate's.