My son has a PS4 and his birthday is coming up. He loves his PS4, but I bought it years ago and it is only 500GB. That's like 4 games now.

So I kicked around the idea of surprising him a PS5, but the ones I see are 825GB. What's the largest internal storage version? Anyway, when I covertly brought up the PS5 to gauge his interest without giving away the surprise he said he didn't like the PS5 controller. Do PS4 Dual Shocks work natively with the PS5? Probably not, Sony gotta move new controllers.

So I put that idea on hold, not least because even at 1 TB that's not close to the increase in capacity I am hoping to give him. Which led me to consider swapping out the hard drive of his existing console or adding an external USB drive. Swapping the drive is simple from a mechanical point of view, but reinstalling the OS and so forth has me wary. The best option is an external USB drive, and the PS4 supports up 8TB. So a 4 TB USB external is a good path. But then the PS4 has just 3 USB ports correct? And with controllers and VR I imagine he has them all used up. So would a USB hub work with this, to get everything connected?

I'll take a look at his console to see what he has connected and if there are any USB ports open. Anyone here go down this road? What did you do?

Had to figure there would have been one guy here with a PS4 haha.

Anyway, in case anyone in the years to come has the same question, I'll record my decisions for posterity

For the storage solution I went with a Western Digital Black 5TB P10-Game Drive. This alone will hold more than 10x what the console does. Will blow his mind, and he has no clue.

To solve the USB issue I went with a Anker 4-Port USB 3.0 Portable Data Hub

When I bought my PS4 I just got a 1TB internal drive, set it up to work with the PS4, and swapped out the 500gb drive. I thank the gods that Sony gave us the ability to upgrade/swap out the HDDs ourselves.

Oh wow, a reply! Don't know how I missed it. I considered replacing the internal drive, but that would mean reinstalling the OS, and all of his passwords and friends' list would be gone. Maybe there's a way to back this stuff up, but I decided to leave that alone and go with the external solution, which by the way has worked great and my son is thrilled by his expanded storage.