This article discusses some troubleshooting fun I had with a Play Station 4 a couple of days ago. Turns out for some reason it didn’t want to save to the external USB 3.0 Seagate 1 TB HDD that I decided to use for a backup. It was on my TODO list for a while because I plan on replacing the disk with something larger. Yes, I plan on providing notes for that as well. I sure don’t want to spend the extra coin and upload all of that data to the cloud using Play Station Plus.

Play Station 4 supports only two file system formats for external storage.

  • FAT32 - Bad bad bad. Doesn’t allow for large data transfer. Has a file size limit of 4 GB and only supports a volume size of 2 TB.
  • exFAT - Hello beautiful. Supports file sizes of 16 EB (Exabytes) and volume sizes of 64 ZB (Zettabyes). I think we’ll go with that. I haven’t researched a whole lot in regards to file integrity on this file system. But, it’s already better than FAT32 in my opinion. Plus, all the drive is going to do is sit after a backup.

For some reason when I formatted the disk in exFAT on my Windows machine and plugged it into the Play Station 4. It was mounting as extended storage. Though, I don’t remember setting it to that. I probably did. I don’t remember seeing anywhere that the Play Station 4 does that by default.

Extended Storage is where you use an external disk to act as more storage for your applications and game data. It’s useful for if you need a temporary storage solution and don’t want to go through the hassle of replacing the disk outright for a little while. Not to mention delete saved games and game installations outright.

Extended Storage isn’t something you can save backups on. This is because it’s technically seen as an extended or unmovable partition on your device. Not removable media. The Play Station 4 will also fight you until the bitter end if you attempt to back it up to this. I don’t have the error but most of it is below.

the connected USB storage device is being used as extended storage.

Unplugged the USB device and plugged it back in and it displayed the same error when I attempted to back it up.

Removed the drive as extended storage, unplugged it, and plugged it back in and it displayed the same error.

It was getting a little frustrating until I saw there were more options for the disk. Looks like you can format disks in the Play Station 4 and you don’t need to do it from a different computer.

Since there wasn’t any data on the external media. I formatted the drive using the Play Station 4, unplugged it after removing it as extended storage, plugged it back in and I was able to use it as a data disk for backups.

Going to attempt to recreate this issue again so I can confirm that this post will be helpful for others. This was just a case of mild frustration.