One of the coolest features we saw in Sony’s own teardown of its new PlayStation 4 was how easy it looked to replace the console’s hard drive. In fact, the PS4 shown in Sony’s teardown video had a hard drive that was literally held in place by one screw, which means that even the less mechanically inclined of us out there shouldn’t have much of a problem swapping out the device’s 500GB hard drive for a bigger one if we need it. The team at iFixit tore apart the PS4 to see for itself if hard drive replacement was as easy as Sony made it look and found that it really is a simple little operation.
“We’ll have a detailed guide shortly for those intrepid gamers who fancy a bigger drive or a zippy SSD — but for now, rest easy knowing all that stands between you and hard drive nirvana is a plastic cover and some screws,” iFixit writes. “Not only is this hard drive user-replaceable, but it’s a standard 2.5″ (a.k.a. laptop-sized) SATA drive, meaning you can replace or upgrade your storage with any off-the-shelf drive you like, so long as it meets these standards: no thicker than 9.5 mm, and no smaller than 160 GB. Users rejoice!”
iFixit gives the PS4 an 8 out of 10 for its repairability and only knocks how difficult it is to access the fan, which all console owners know eventually will need to be cleaned out.
