A 1TB PS5 SSD was the sweet spot for boosting your console’s storage – here’s why that’s no longer true
One of the PlayStation 5’s greatest assets is that you can boost its storage with an off-the-shelf M.2 solid-state drive. All the drive has to do is meet a few reasonable requirements and you can pick what you want to expand your console’s capacity.
I was a big advocate for 1TB being perfect for everyone ever since we knew about the PS5’s SSD bay. In the run-up to the firmware update that made the SSD bay usable, and in the months – and years – that followed I was utterly confident that 1TB was the absolute sweet spot. It was plentiful in terms of its literal storage space being both enough for a big library, and not ridiculously large (who is honestly playing 4TB or 8TBs worth of games?), and the prices were agreeable without being outrageous.
However, in 2024, I think the tide has turned when it comes to the best SSDs for PS5. It feels as though a single terabyte of extra PS5 storage, while certainly serviceable, just doesn’t cut it anymore and 2TB is now where it’s at.
With game sizes increasing with every release season, ever-expanding live-service games, as well as having to reinstall big beasts for new expansions, or revisit classics from previous generations through remasters, and some incredible blockbusters which offer immense replayability and continual exploration, 2TB of storage is flat-out fast becoming a necessity when looking for more console storage.
In with the new…
A big part of the need for 2TB now is due to the simple influence of old Father Time. However, there’s a little more to it than ‘more time = more games’, and it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
Yes, there are more games than ever for the PS5 because we’re now deep into its fourth year, or as Sony puts it, the “latter half of the PS5’s life cycle”. Games are still being released for PS4 too, which also contributes to this massive, growing library given the PS5’s ability to play PS4 games via backwards compatibility.
But it’s the size and ambition of these games that make them more extraordinary and thus have a bigger impact on our consoles’ storage. More of these games are exceptional, incredibly engrossing, and highly replayable, making them titles you want to keep to hand for longer – Baldur’s Gate 3 and its 108GB file size is a perfect example. Games like it are the ones you’ll keep installed for a very long time, always taking up precious, though well-earned, hard drive space.
If file sizes continue to creep up, and this mix of release ‘types’ keeps going, then, from a practical sense alone, it makes 2TB drives a more worthwhile investment.
Recent games like Diablo 4 are absolutely worth keeping installed with their seasonal content and plentiful reasons to keep jumping back in. Meanwhile, Sea of Thieves (60+GB when I downloaded it the other day) has just launched on PS5 too, which has a chunky install size and is only going to get larger with time and extra content.
Single-player games in the past year or so have been exceptional too. Adventures like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (nearly 90GB) and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (a whopping 150-odd GB) are massive, and have new game plus modes or open worlds to keep going in. Meanwhile, huge solo games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 (60+GB) are games that will keep folks entertained for months.
And if you’re a fan of fighting games or sports too? Better throw in your title of choice here from the last year or so, squeezing in another space-demanding beast or two.
…and also in with the not-so-new
We’re in the age of the remasters this generation too, as well as opportunities to revisit colossal games. The former has seen some huge hits allowing us to dip into previous generations in pretty spectacular ways. Dead Space (30GB), Resident Evil 4 (58GB), and The Last of Us Part I, and Part 2 Remastered (both around 80GB) are all heftily-sized bangers requiring a healthy amount of storage.
However, other big games have seen new breaths of life through expansions and add-ons that make them worthy of hard drive space once again, years after their initial release. Want to jump into Kratos’ roguelike Valhalla DLC? Better reinstall all of God of War Ragnarok (c.85GB). Keen to check out Phantom Liberty? That’ll be all of Cyberpunk 2077 (c.90GB) reinstalled then.
Throw in your enormous live service games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (an enormous 235GB) or Call of Duty Warzone (reported to be 173GB to download from scratch earlier this year by users), and Apex Legends (70+GB on my PS5 right now). That’s all a recipe for a full-to-bursting hard drive. We used to make throwaway, but genuinely accurate, remarks about needing an SSD just for Call of Duty; it’s now the case that many folks will need extra storage for Call of Duty and everything else.
If file sizes continue to creep up, and this mix of release ‘types’ keeps going, then, from a practical sense alone, it makes 2TB drives a more worthwhile investment.
Death, taxes, and the fall of tech prices
Another attraction of a 2TB drive is that the prices on them have dropped considerably. However, price cuts aren’t the only positive here: it’s the resulting value they offer – how much you get for your cash – that makes them truly worth consideration.
They’re not necessarily double the price of a 1TB drive, as they have been in prior years. They’re now often far, far less than the price of two single terabyte drives combined. Over deals seasons we have even seen 2TB PS5 SSDs drop to or just below the $100 / £100 mark which is incredible value for money.
However, even in leaner times, like recent months, when 1TB SSDs have stubbornly held their price of around $100 / £100, a 2TB SSD that costs $150 / £150 or even $170 / £170 is a no-brainer on the value front. Bagging the second terabyte in particular for less than a 1TB drive is the best part of the value on offer.
One eye on the future
While the number of excellent games does take a toll on storage nowadays, the other side of the coin when it comes to 1TB now not being enough, or getting dangerously close to not enough, is that 2TB will offer some futureproofing; not least due to the extra headroom it offers.
And with a PS5 Pro very likely on the horizon, there’s more cause than ever for extra room. We know games that were enhanced for the PS4 Pro were often larger in file size, and that’s likely to be the same with a PS5 Pro. Throw in some PS5 Pro patches for existing PS5 games and we’ll be swimming in data once again. I haven’t even mentioned GTA 6 yet either…
The truth is that something like a 1.5TB would be the next sweet spot. But in the face of no such drive existing, it’s clear that a 2TB capacity PS5 SSD and its extra headroom is the optimal capacity for what is still the best PS5 accessory you can get.
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