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How to Replace Your PS4 500GB Hard Drive With Your 1TB Seagate Backup Drive

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Posted by Wale Adekile . Posted on: at .

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When you have a PS4 console with just 500GB hard drive, it gets filled up real quick as you constantly need to delete old games to accommodate new ones. The first time this happened, I decided to replace the PS4 HDD with the 1TB hard disk inside the 1TB Seagate Backup Plus drive I wasn’t using to its full potential. My whole backup was just around 300GB, with about 700GB of space wasting away.

What I did was to simply swap the 500GB PS4 hard drive for the 1TB backup drive and everything went smoothly. There are basically 6 main steps involved:

  1. Backing up your saves
  2. Downloading the latest PS4 firmware
  3. Disassembling the backup drive
  4. Taking out the PS4 hard drive
  5. Replacement
  6. Installing the PS4 firmware

Please note that there are also other options like getting an external HDD for your ps4, instead of replacing the built-in one.

Backing up your saves

Before getting started, I suggest you backup your saves to the cloud if have a PlayStation Plus subscription. But if you don’t you can still do this from the PS4 settings.

To save your data to a flash drive:

  1. Go to Settings > Application Saved data Management > Saved Data in System Storage > Copy to USB Storage Device
  2. Then select each of your games and Copy.

Better still, you could back up everything to bigger USB storage by going to System > Backup and Restore. With the backup done, we’re ready to download the latest firmware.

Downloading the latest firmware

Follow this link to download the latest version of your PS4’s firmware. Do not click the first download button, you only need that if you’re updating an existing installation.

doWNload PS4 firmware

Click the link below that, scroll down a bit and hit the Download Now button. The file size should be around 1GB or thereabouts.

After the download is complete, plug in your flash drive to your computer, Create a new folder named PS4 in all caps. If you’ve already backed up your saves to this same flash drive, this folder should be there already. Open that PS4 folder and create another folder named UPDATE, in all caps.

Now copy the firmware you downloaded earlier to this location (\PS4\UPDATE\). And now, to the next step.

Disassembling the backup drive

Now the hardest part is cracking the Seagate Backup Plus drive open. This procedure is almost the same for most Seagate backup drives. Be careful not to damage the shell because you’re still going to need it. Use a pry tool to force it open, but again, be careful. If you don’t have a pry tool, use a similar object you can find, preferably plastic.

disassemble seagate backup plus drive

Take out the hard drive and remove the four screws along the sides.

Back up whatever you need to back up on this drive to your computer because you should format the drive before inserting it into your PS4 console.

Taking out the PS4 HDD

remove ps4 hard disk

I’m still the using the original PS4 console and it’s quite easy to reach the hard disk. All you need to do is to just:

  1. Pull the plastic cover on this left side.
  2. Take out the single screw holding the hard drive cage.
  3. Pull out the hard drive cage.

For PS4 Slim and PS4 pro, the procedure is a little different. The hard drive is actually around the back.

Remove the 4 screws around the hard drive cage to take out the hard drive. Be sure to note where the label on the HDD is facing and the position of the connector interface.

Replacement

  1. Put the hard drive from your Seagate backup drive into the cage, but be sure the connector interface and label are facing the same directions they were.
  2. Now put the 4 screws back in place and slide in the new 1TB hard drive into the PS4 console.
  3. Put back the single screw holding the cage in place and cover up the PS4.
  4. Insert the USB flash drive containing the downloaded firmware and plug in your DualShock 4 controller to proceed to firmware installion.

Installing the Firmware

Installing the firmware is easy.

  1. Hold down the power button on the console for about 7 seconds. You need to hear a second beep and you should find yourself in the safe mode.
  2. Select the last option to Intialize the PS4.initialize ps4
  3. After a while, you should get a prompt to continue. Select Yes and go grab cold drink.
  4. You PS4 should reboot once or twice during the installation.

If you can’t install the firmware, be sure you downloaded the right file and also ensure it’s placed in \PS4\UPDATE\ on the flash drive.

After it’s all done, you can now setup your PS4 console, sign in to PSN, install your games and restore your backup from the flash drive or from the cloud.

As for the 500GB hard drive you removed, you can put it back into the seagate backup drive plus shell, format it and continue using as your backup drive.