Cheapest PS5 storage ranked by price per terabyte

PS5 storage: internal expansion, or a USB drive?

The PS5 handles extra storage in two completely different ways, and which drive you want depends entirely on which one you need. The table above ranks every drive we track that states PS5 compatibility by real £/TB — but read this first, because the cheapest drive on the page is not the right drive for every job.

• Internal M.2 expansion (for playing PS5 games): the console has a spare M.2 slot, and Sony's requirement is a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD with a heatsink fitted — 5,500 MB/s or faster read. PS5 games can be installed and played from here exactly as from the built-in drive. Buy a model sold with a heatsink, or one low enough to clear the bay cover.
• USB drive (for PS4 games and storage): any external hard drive or SSD over USB can play PS4 titles directly and can store PS5 titles, but not run them — you copy them back to internal storage to play. That copy is still far quicker than re-downloading 100GB, which is why a cheap large USB hard drive is genuinely useful alongside the internal upgrade.
• What to watch for: an expensive external SSD gains you very little over USB here, because the port, not the drive, is the limit. Spend the money on the internal M.2 and buy the external on £/TB.

Modern titles run 50–150GB each, so 1TB fills faster than most people expect and 2TB is the more comfortable starting point — see how much storage do I need. For the full breakdown of what makes a drive good for gaming, read our gaming storage guide, and NVMe vs SATA for why the internal slot is so specific. Browse related pages: NVMe SSDs, 2TB drives and Xbox storage.