How PS5 Custom SSD Works?

One of the biggest selling points of the PlayStation 5 is how much faster the system accesses game data, leading to much faster load times and other benefits. A bespoke SSD storage solution is a major part of that, as well as a series of custom hardware solutions to ease bottlenecks of how data is handled and processed.

PS5 SSD at Glance

• The ability to access 5.5GB (raw) or a typical 8–9GB (compressed) of data per second. This is around 100 times faster than what’s possible on PS4 currently — which has an IO throughput of around 50–100MB/s, which is dependent on data location on the HDD.
• Using an SSD means developers don’t need to duplicate the same files over and over throughout an HDD or Blu-ray disc to compensate for slower loading — meaning more of what you download are actually relevant game files.
• Sony believes this results in significantly faster loading times — with games teased to boot within a second from the dashboard, and near eradication of loading times.
• Much faster loading means expanded design freedom for game developers making worlds.
• Do you know how PS4 patches often require just as much free space before it can download and install? With the PS5, this will be a thing of the past — requiring only space you actually need for updates.

For more context…

How does it do this? A standard hard drive as seen in the PS4 right now accesses and loads data in all kinds of inefficient ways.

A standard HDD on the PS4 has to ‘seek’ the data it needs across the drive, and game developers have many tricks to work around this, resulting in all kinds of knock-on effects.

By having an SSD by default, as well as custom hardware solutions as part of the PS5, these tricks and other bottlenecks are a thing of the past. You can expect much faster loading, and much more efficient game storage, as a result.

If you want to know how effective this custom hardware is — using an SSD on PS4 right now should offer 10x faster speeds, but it’s only 2x in reality. The PS5, meanwhile, looks to offer a 100x increase in speed:

How you can expand PS5 hard drive storage

There are two PS5 expanded storage options for the PS5:

• Expanding internal storage with a Sony-certified, off-the-shelf SSD
• Plugging in an external hard drive

The two available options have some caveats as to what can be used, and what data can be stored on them.