So i noticed a lot of retailers are advertising external HDD's on their PS5 pages and given the small space internally on the new consoles (825GB PS5 / 1TB SX, 500GB SS) i assume people will be rushing to grab an external HDD to manage some of the expected storage issues.
My advice is : DON'T
WHY?
Well firstly Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed that Next Gen Games will not be playable from an external hard drive and will be only usable for Back Ups and Data Storage.
Microsoft are the only ones so far who have confirmed older gen games will be playable from an external HDD
Sony has not yet confirmed this but it is expected to be the case.
Both the PS5 and Xbox have an expansion slot for a NVMe SSD (Xbox is max 1TB / PS5 Support is unknown at this stage)
However
The type of NVMe used in both consoles is a newer product that is not yet widely available and as such you could mistakenly buy the wrong type (likely as you can not yet buy the correct one) and waste your money.
Microsoft has an announced expansion product (1TB) without a price at this point.
Sony has not yet announced an expansion product but is likley too when the drives become more widely available.
One up side is that you can TRANSFER games from your console to an external drive and back again, but you MUST PLAY THE GAME FROM THE INTERNAL STORAGE if it is a next gen game.
Anyway this is a bit ranty..but thought i would post here given the fair amount of people who appear to have pre ordered the PS5 as of posting this.
Also for those wondering some file sizes have been confirmed
Demon’s Souls – 66gb
Spider -Man Miles Morales (Including The Original Game) – 105gb
Spider-Man Miles Morales (Standalone) – 50gb
HDD's are perfectly fine for those wanting to play their PS4 games on the system, and also as an offloading buffer (i.e moving games off the SSD, temporarily, before moving it back when you want to play - saves re-downloading it or re-installing it from scratch, which will likely be slower than a transfer).
But I agree, they should have been much clearer on the purpose of HDD's and their limitations. I pre-ordered a PS5, and will be running a 4TB HDD for all my PS4 games, and will look to get a compatible PCIe4.0 NVME drive once announced (and affordable!)