The Xbox Series X offers a proprietary Seagate-made storage expansion card and you can now install an M.2 SSD in your PS5 to expand storage for PS5 games. With those caveats noted, our current top picks for the best external hard disk drive and external solid-state drive are below. These (or nearly identical models with less storage capacity) have been used or anecdotally tested by CNET editors. We'll update our list of the best external hard drives and SSDs as we test new products. You can expand storage for PS4 games on your PS5 by adding a standard external SSD because you can play PS4 games directly from an external SSD. However, that's not the case for PS5 games, which take up a ton of space and can only be played from the PS5's internal drive or an M.2 SSD that you install in a special expansion bay inside your PS5. While the Seagate FireCuda 530 technically isn't an external SSD, it's not so different from Seagate's Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X/S in that it's an NVMe SSD with very high transfer speeds (up to 7,300MBps, according to Seagate, though my PS5 listed the top rate at 6,800MBps ). Several M.2 SSDs will work with the PS5 ( see our complete list) but ideally, you want one with an integrated heatsink. Read more: Here's how to boost your PlayStation 5 storage The Seagate FireCuda 530 with heatsink starts at $140 for the 512GB version and jumps to $210 for the 1TB version (most popular), $400 for the 2TB version and over $1,000 for the 4TB version.

Cnet best ssd hard drive 2018