PS5 External SSD Testing: SATA vs NVMe vs Hard Drive - Back-Compat Titles + Read/Write Speed Tests!

What's the best way to expand your PlayStation 5 with external storage? Can you retain the loading speeds of PS4 games running on the internal SSD? Is there any advantage to choosing a more expensive NVMe drive over a SATA model? How long does it take to transfer data to and from each drive? Tom Morgan did all of the testing for this one and Rich presents - and there are results both expected and unexpected.

See every loading time test we did in a more digestible table form, along with more extended analysis and more thoughts on some of the more curious results: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-whats-the-best-external-storage-for-ps5

Here are affiliate links to the hardware we used:

Sabrent USB-SATA adapter: https://amzn.to/3dqKyKs (UK) or https://amzn.to/3tpvvGo (USA)
Samsung 870 Qvo: https://amzn.to/2Q2ZSEa (UK) or https://amzn.to/3spGj66 (USA)
Asus NVMe enclosure: https://amzn.to/3e7CUDG (UK) or https://amzn.to/3ske5cQ (USA)
Samsung 980 Pro: https://amzn.to/2Q8T7k4 (UK) or https://amzn.to/3slmkp7 (USA)
5TB Seagate external HDD: https://amzn.to/3mV5BYy (UK) or https://amzn.to/3tuDy4D (USA)

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