Click OK when the Format Complete pop-up screen appears.Īt this point, you have a hard drive formatted for PS4 and ready for use. Check the Quick Format box, and click Startĭepending on the size of the drive you want to use for PS4, and if there are files to be deleted in it, this can take a few to several minutes to finish. But if you want the external hard drive to work on the PS4 platform, you should choose either FAT32 or exFAT (the latter is highly recommended), otherwise, the PS4 system won’t recognize it.Ĥ. Right-click on the external hard drive and click Formatīy default, Windows computers will choose NTFS (New Technology File System) for you because that’s the native Microsoft filing system. You can also find it in the left sidebar of File Explorer. If your external hard drive is working properly and has no damage/defect, your computer will automatically detect it, and the drive will appear under Devices and Drives next to your internal drives in the This PC window. Connect the PS4 external hard drive to your PC So, now let’s start on formatting the external hard drive for PS4 on a PC using Windows 10 format feature.

So if your external hard drive already has important files on it, make sure to back them up before proceeding. Also, you have to note that formatting the external hard drive will erase all the existing files on it. We’ll be using Microsoft Windows 10 for this purpose. To learn more on PS4 external hard drive format, how to format it either as extended storage or mass/backup storage, and what cases you need to format it on a PC, please visit our comprehensive guide: PS4 External Hard Drive Format. Otherwise, if you’re looking to format the PS4 external hard drive to be used as extended storage on which you can install games/apps directly, you need to do that on the PS4 not a PC. Yes, in some situations it’s inevitable to format the PS4 external HDD on a PC, but that’s not the common case, especially when the PS4 system already offers the format feature.Īdditionally, formatting the external hard drive on a PC for PS4 is only reasonable when you want to use that external HDD as a mass/backup storage.

You can format the external hard drive for PS4 on a PC with ease and quickness, it’s not a difficult operation at all.īut first, you have to ask yourself: why do you really need to format the external hard drive on a PC, not on the PS4 itself? This question is important to figure out what you really need, especially if you get to know that the PS4 system can already format any PS4-compatible external hard drive without the need of a PC. When you buy a new external hard drive for your PlayStation 4, you need first to format it before starting using it.

Easy to use external hard drive for pc