Sony Is Going Digital-Only. Your PS5 Storage Situation Just Got a Lot More Urgent.

A93 PS5 Gaming SSD

Sony announced it is ending physical disc production for new game titles. No more picking up a disc, installing it, and freeing up storage by putting the box back on the shelf. Every new game going forward downloads directly to your PS5 — and stays there until you delete it.

If you have a PS5, you probably already know what this means. You have been doing the mental maths since the announcement. Your console shipped with 825GB of raw storage, but only around 667GB is actually available after the operating system takes its cut. The rest belongs to Sony before you install a single thing. A couple of years ago, that was manageable. Modern AAA titles in 2026 routinely exceed 150GB each. GTA 6 drops on November 19, with a rumoured install size of around 200GB — possibly more once GTA Online rolls out. That is nearly a third of your usable storage gone on a single game.

The petition against Sony’s decision is approaching 200,000 signatures. The outrage is understandable, but the decision is made. The more useful question is: what do you do with your PS5 storage situation right now, before the digital-only era fully arrives?

The answer is an M.2 SSD expansion. But the PS5’s slot is not a plug-and-play affair, and the installation trip wires are more specific than most guides admit. Here is everything you need to know before you buy and before you open the console.

Why Your PS5 Storage Problem Is Worse Than It Looks on Paper

The 667GB ceiling is already a lie by the time you count your library.

Every PS5 comes with Astro’s Playroom pre-installed. If you are on PlayStation Plus, you have likely downloaded several catalogue titles. System updates, saved data, and captured screenshots and video clips take their share too. Before you install your first major game, most PS5 owners are already working with well under 500GB of breathing room. At 150–200GB per modern title, that is two or three games before you are making painful decisions about what to delete.

The digital-only shift removes the safety valve disc owners used.

If you owned a disc copy of a game, you could uninstall it, put the disc on the shelf, and reinstall when you wanted to play again. The licence lived on the disc. With digital purchases, the licence lives in your account but the data has to live somewhere on your console. Deleting a game you paid for and re-downloading it repeatedly is the workaround — but re-downloading a 150GB game on anything less than a perfect connection is not a workflow, it is a punishment.

The Locker Room Analogy

Think about a gym locker room with one locker assigned to you. It is a perfectly reasonable locker — plenty of room for your stuff when you first joined. But over time, you started bringing more gear: extra trainers, a change of clothes, protein shakes, a foam roller, a wireless speaker. The locker is the same size. Your stuff has doubled.

The solution is obvious — rent a second locker. But the gym has a rule: the second locker has to be a specific brand, a specific size, a specific lock type, and it has to fit on a very particular section of wall. Bring the wrong locker and the gym will turn you away at the door. Bring the right one and you double your space instantly.

Your PS5 expansion slot is that wall. The rules are specific, they are non-negotiable, and understanding them before you buy is the difference between a seamless upgrade and an expensive mistake.

PS5 M.2 SSD Requirements: What Sony Actually Demands

Sony’s requirements for PS5 M.2 expansion are strict across five dimensions — interface, speed, form factor, heatsink, and physical dimensions — and getting any one of them wrong means the console will reject the drive. Here is what each requirement actually means in practice:

Requirement	Sony’s Spec	What It Rules Out	Why It Matters
Interface	M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 only	Gen3 NVMe (blocked), SATA M.2 (blocked), Gen5 (works but runs at Gen4 speed only)	Gen3 and SATA are physically identical to Gen4 — the PS5 blocks them in firmware, not hardware
Sequential read speed	5,500 MB/s minimum recommended	Slower Gen3 or budget Gen4 drives	PS5 shows a warning for sub-5,500 MB/s drives; aim for 7,000+ for no-compromise performance
Form factor	M.2 2280 standard (2230, 2242, 2260, 22110 also accepted)	25mm wide drives	2280 is what almost all consumer drives use — confirm before buying
Heatsink	Required — built-in or separate	Any drive without cooling	Non-negotiable — the PS5 slot runs hot under gaming loads; no heatsink means thermal throttling
Total dimensions with heatsink	Under 11.25mm height, 8mm above board, 2.45mm below board	Oversized third-party heatsinks	This is the most common buying mistake — heatsinks that fit the drive may not fit the PS5 slot

One specification that many buyers miss entirely: the PS5 does not support Host Memory Buffer, which means DRAM-less drives that rely on borrowing system RAM may behave differently than in a PC environment. For gaming workloads — which are overwhelmingly read-heavy — this is rarely a practical problem, but Sony’s own recommendation is drives with independent, stable performance.

The read speed requirement deserves more attention than the marketing treats it. The 5,500 MB/s threshold is designed to match or exceed the performance of the PS5’s internal drive, ensuring games loaded from the expansion slot do not suffer from stuttering or longer load times. The console will still accept slower drives and display a warning — but if you are spending money on an upgrade, spending it on a drive that triggers a warning on boot is not the outcome you want. Drives running at 7,000 MB/s and above clear this bar comfortably.

The Installation: Where Most People Go Wrong

The physical process of installing an M.2 SSD in a PS5 takes about fifteen minutes. The mistakes that trip people up are almost never mechanical — they are the small steps that seem optional until they are not.

Before you open the console, update your PS5 system software to the latest version. If your PS5 is connected to the internet updates install automatically, but manually verify before you begin — the expansion slot requires current firmware to initialise a new drive. Skipping this step is the single most common reason a correctly installed, fully compatible drive fails to appear on first boot.

Also discharge any static electricity by touching a grounded metal object before handling the drive. This takes one second and costs nothing. Ignoring it carries a small but real risk of damaging the drive before it ever enters the slot.

You will need a #1 Phillips head screwdriver. A small flashlight helps — the expansion slot sits under a cover inside the console and the relevant screws and markings are small.

The spacer is not decorative — move it to your drive size. Inside the PS5’s expansion slot, there is a small screw and a spacer that secures the far end of the M.2 drive. This spacer sits at the “110” marking by default. It needs to be moved to the groove corresponding to the size of your M.2 SSD — for a standard 2280 drive, that is the marking labelled “80.” People who skip this step end up with a drive that is inserted but unsecured, which either fails to be recognised or rattles loose over time.

The screw is small and the fan is right there. This is not a joke warning — it is one of the most frequently reported installation headaches. The first screw you remove secures the expansion slot cover. Drop it into the nearby PS5 fan and you will be fishing it out before you can continue. Work over a light-coloured surface. Place screws somewhere they cannot roll.

Insert the drive at an angle, not flat. Hold the edge of your M.2 SSD, align it with the notch on the expansion connector, and insert it diagonally upward — then firmly push it all the way in. The drive should be fully seated before you press it down and fasten the screw. If you proceed with an incorrectly or partially inserted drive, it may cause damage to the terminal and the PS5 console. The most common reason for a PS5 not recognising a drive after installation is the drive not being pushed fully into the connector before being pressed down.

Peel the thermal pad film off — both sides. This is where most people go wrong with heatsinks. The thermal pad has a transparent protective film on one or both sides. It must be removed completely before installation — the pad needs direct contact with the drive’s chip surface to work. Leaving the film on means the heatsink is sitting on plastic, not conducting heat at all. The film is thin and clear and easy to miss. Check twice.

Do not add a second heatsink over a built-in one. If your M.2 SSD has a built-in heatsink, Sony explicitly recommends against adding any additional heatsink. Doing so may reduce the effectiveness of the built-in cooling rather than improving it. More is not better here — the built-in heatsink is designed for the drive’s specific thermal output and the PS5’s specific slot dimensions.

Do not skip replacing the expansion slot cover. Sony states that the expansion slot cover creates negative pressure within the slot when closed, which aids the cooling airflow. Leaving it off is not just cosmetic — it affects thermal management for the installed drive. Reattach it every time.

When you power the PS5 back on after installation, the formatting guide will appear automatically. This formatting step will wipe anything currently on the expansion SSD — it will not affect the PS5’s internal storage. If you are moving a drive from an older PS5 or PS5 Pro, note that you will need to reformat it for the new console even if it was previously PS5-formatted.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. My existing drive from my old PS5 is not being recognised on my new PS5 Pro. What is happening?

PS5 Pro users have reported that moving an SSD from a base PS5 requires signing into the Pro first before installing the drive — users who skipped the initial setup and inserted their existing SSD immediately ran into recognition errors. If you have already run into this issue, try removing the drive, completing the PS5 Pro’s initial sign-in setup, then reinstalling the SSD with the console powered down. The drive should be recognised on next boot and prompt you to format or use it as-is.

2. The PS5 is showing a warning that my drive’s speed may be inadequate. Can I still use it?

Yes, the drive will still work and games will load from it. The warning appears for any drive running below Sony’s 5,500 MB/s recommendation. For most titles it will be fine — the speed difference between a 3,500 MB/s Gen3 drive and a 7,000 MB/s Gen4 drive is most noticeable during open-world asset streaming, not during straightforward loading screens. That said, with GTA 6 arriving in November and games only getting larger and more demanding on storage bandwidth, investing in a drive that clears the speed bar properly is the more future-proof decision.

3. Can I install a PCIe Gen5 drive in the PS5 for even faster speeds?

Gen5 drives physically fit the PS5’s M.2 slot and will function, but the PS5’s expansion slot is limited to Gen4 bandwidth. A Gen5 drive will run at Gen4 speeds inside the PS5 — you will not see any performance advantage over a good Gen4 drive, and you will pay a Gen5 premium for nothing. Save the Gen5 investment for a PC build with a compatible Gen5 M.2 slot.

4. I bought a heatsink separately. How do I know if it will fit the PS5’s slot?

The total height of the SSD and heatsink combined must be under 11.25mm. More specifically, the height above the circuit board must be under 8mm, and the height below the board must be under 2.45mm. Many third-party heatsinks exceed the 8mm above-board limit even when they fit the drive itself. The safest approach is buying a drive with a built-in PS5-designed heatsink rather than sourcing one separately — the dimensions are engineered to fit rather than guessed at.

5. How much storage should I actually buy for the PS5 expansion slot?

In 2026, AAA titles regularly exceed 150GB, and the PS5 Slim offers roughly 850GB usable internal storage. If you are starting with a near-full internal drive, a 1TB expansion barely doubles your working space — and at the pace modern titles are growing, you will fill that within a year of active play. 2TB is the practical minimum for anyone who does not want to revisit this decision soon. If you play a wide library or plan to keep GTA 6 alongside several other large titles permanently installed, 4TB is the option that gives you genuine breathing room rather than slightly delayed stress.

The Verdict: So What Should You Actually Do?

Here it is in plain terms:

If your PS5’s internal storage is nearly full and you have been putting off the upgrade: Stop waiting. Every new major title shrinks your remaining space faster than the one before it, and with digital-only on the way there is no disc-based workaround left. The addlink A93 1TB covers the minimum — it clears Sony’s speed requirement at 7,400 MB/s read, ships with a heatsink built to the PS5’s slot dimensions, and single-sided construction means no clearance issues on either side of the board.

If you want the upgrade done once and not revisited for several years: The addlink A93 2TB is where most PS5 owners land when they do the maths properly. Internal storage plus 2TB expansion gives you a library large enough to keep your most-played titles permanently installed without constantly shuffling. That covers GTA 6, whatever launches alongside it, and the year of content updates that follow.

If you have a large library, play constantly, and want to stop thinking about storage entirely: The addlink A93 4TB is the version of this upgrade where storage stops being a decision you make. Every major title currently available fits with room to grow. At Sony’s confirmed digital-only direction for new releases, that headroom becomes more valuable with each passing year.

Before you buy any drive for your PS5, verify two things: that the total heatsink height is under 11.25mm, and that the drive is PCIe Gen4 NVMe with a confirmed sequential read speed above 5,500 MB/s. You can find the full addlink PS5-compatible SSD lineup at addlink.com.tw/m-2-pcie-ssd. And if you are planning ahead for November — sort your storage before GTA 6 launch week, not during it.

Are you still on the default PS5 storage, or have you already expanded? Drop a comment — we are curious how people are managing their libraries heading into the biggest game launch of the year.

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A93 PS5 Gaming SSD