PS4 Vs Xbox One: PlayStation 4 Hard Drive Is Much Easier To Swap Out

The PS4 vs Xbox One console war rages on, and this round compares how easy it is to swap out the stock hard drive. Sony wins this one because their hard drive is not only universally exchangeable, but easier to take out and replace, as previously reported by The Inquisitr. Microsoft seems to think you want to stick with their 500GB hard drive.

If you’re the type of gamer who downloads and installs games a lot, the 500GB hard drive is not going to take long to fill. With Call of Duty: Ghosts weighing in at over 40GB itself, and the games most likely going to only get bigger, that hard drive will only handle a handful of games before it’s full enough to necessitate a swap.

Unless you’re just a casual gamer, you will want a larger capacity hard drive within the next few years without having to buy another console just to upgrade.

The videos shown here should be enough to settle this round of PS4 vs Xbox One. With Sony’s console, all you have to do is download the firmware to a USB flash drive, slide off the glossy black panel, take out some screws, swap it out, put everything back together, and format the hard drive. Microsoft made it much more complicated.

If it’s speed you’re looking for with the Xbox One, you should most likely go for the hybrid EVO SSD or equivalent as it loads everything slightly faster than its alternatives, but it’s over $100 more. It’s up to you whether loading speed really matters, but it’s recommended that if you must swap out the Xbox One hard drive, you should go for at least a terabyte or more. A few years from now, you’ll still be able to play the newest games and keep the older ones. Gamers stuck with the original hard drive will find themselves deleting older games to make room for new ones, which is not cost effective, and a general waste of time.

To swap out the Xbox One hard drive, you will need one or two 2GB flash drives (or one flash drive and a partition, as explained in the video). There are three packages you’ll need to download before you even get started; a 64-bit Ubuntu.iso file, a universal USB installer, and Juvenal’s scripts. Yes, you will need Ubuntu to install the Xbox One OS on your new hard drive, because you’re actually hacking the system.

The entire process could take you a few hours from start to finish, so be patient. Do it correctly and you’ll be back to playing your favorite games soon enough with a lot more room to store them.

Keep in mind that trying to swap out the hard drive on your Xbox One will void the warranty, again giving Sony another point in the PS4 vs Xbox One console war.

Carefully follow the steps given in the videos above. One mistake could be costly.