Double Your Pleasure

I've owned my Playstation 4 for about a year and a half now, and while I've been impressed with what the machine can do, the modest hard drive included with the system drastically limits its horizons. Five hundred gigabytes would have been plenty of storage for the last generation of consoles, but a machine as powerful as the Playstation 4 needs more room to stretch its legs, and the hard drive that comes with the system doesn't give it that opportunity. As a frantic blue genie used to say... "phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space."

After spending a year juggling games to make the most of that limited hard drive space, I decided that it was time for an upgrade. The plan was to purchase a barely used one terabyte drive from a member of Cheap Ass Gamer, pop it into the system, then drop the PS4's old drive into an enclosure and use that to double the storage of my Xbox One. 

On the Playstation 4, this was a time-consuming but ultimately rewarding process. After three hours of backing up files and an extra two hours of restoring them, the system runs exactly as it had before, albeit with double the storage. Unfortunately, the Xbox One has been less cooperative... setting up the external drive was a breeze, but keeping the system online with the drive attached has been a frustrating challenge. It seems to work better when it's plugged into the USB port on the front of the system, but... that's where my Mayflash joystick adapter is supposed to go. o_o;

Still, I'm satisfied. After months of deleting games I wanted to keep to make room for more, I got fed up with making those difficult decisions, and stopped using my Playstation 4 entirely. It feels good to bring the system out of retirement, and have the freedom to use it without having to make constant sacrifices.

EDIT: This is kind of important. According to Reddit, USB 3.0 cables can actively interfere with a wi-fi signal, which is likely why I was having such a hard time getting online with a hard drive plugged into the back of the system. Just something to consider in case you were thinking of getting an external drive for your Xbox One, since only USB 3.0 drives can be used to store games.