How to move your PS4 games and save data to your PS5

the Playstation 5 promises the future, but that doesn’t mean you have to let go of the past. After all, we’re talking about seven years of hard-earned memories: beloved games, hard-earned save data, and adorable trophies. The bad news is that, as far as I know, there is no way to move your screenshots and captured videos from PS4 to PS5. The good news is that moving just about everything else isn’t an uphill battle, unlike most intergenerational transfers. The process just requires a little patience.

Those with a fast internet connection and not overloaded with data limits will find it easier to take the leap. Once you’ve logged into your PS5, you can access your entire library of games from the first screen; it’s all right on that main bar. This will display all the games associated with your account. It’ll even show you the disc-based ones you’ve played on PS4, although you actually need those discs on hand – alongside a PS5 with a disc drive – if you want to play them on PS5.

You can download any digital game by highlighting the one you want, clicking the Options button and selecting “Download”. Those with library of games the size of the Library of Alexandria may want to organize the list first. By clicking on the icon in the left margin, you can sort your library chronologically, alphabetically, by date of purchase or reverse order of the latter two. You can further filter by platform (PS3, PS4 or PS5) or by storefront. The latter option is especially useful if, for example, you just want to see the games you have received from PlayStation Plus. You can also just go to the PlayStation Plus tab to see a full list of all the games you’ve claimed over the past seven years.

Of course, internet speeds and data limits being what they are, you might want to move everything from your PS4 via an external drive. These days, you can buy a 1TB drive – big enough to fit everything on a PS4 Pro – for $ 50 or less.

When you first connect an external hard drive to your PS4 to get your games, you may receive a notification warning you that the drive is incompatible with the system. Do not worry. There is a way to fix this problem. (I tested this with a standard Western Digital Elements 1TB hard drive with a USB 3.0 connection. Your process may differ depending on what you’re using.) First, head to your PS4’s settings. Scroll down to the “Devices” menu. You should see your external device. Click on it, then select the only option: “Format as Extended Storage”. You will need to confirm your decision several times. Just press ‘yes’ all the way through.

Once done, click on your external device again, then click on “Manage Content”. This will take you to the PS4’s Storage menu, which you’re probably familiar with after all these years, but here’s a rundown for good measure: You’ll see options for internal (“system”) and external (“extended”) space. storage. Select your system storage, then click “Applications.” This will bring up a complete list of everything – well, in terms of games and apps – stored on your console. Go to options and select “Move to Extended Storage”. Then all you need to do is select the games and apps you want to port to your PS5 and click “Move”. One note: you cannot store the recorded data, screenshots or captured video clips on external storage.

Any PS4 games that you have ever stored on an existing external drive should work fine with a PS5, as long as it is compatible with the system.

Now that you have everything on your PS4, plug your external drive into your PS5. (The system told me I need to use one of the ports on the back, but that could be a result of the specific Western Digital drive I’m using.) From there, do the following:

1. Go to your PS5 settings. (It’s the gear symbol at the top right.)
2. Scroll to the Storage menu.
3. Navigate to “Extended Storage,” then click “Games & Applications.”
4. Navigate to the second menu (“Items you can move”), select the games and apps you want to move, then press “Move.” Oddly enough, my PS5 automatically moved Amazon Prime Video from my external device and onto my console without asking. What’s up with that, Jeff?

This is how you can move PS4 games to your PS5. The question is whether you should. You can play PS4 games on a PS5 while playing them directly from your external storage. You cannot play PS5 games or even store them on an external drive. These titles must use the system’s internal SSD. For your needs, it may make more sense to store your PS4 games externally while recording the internal SSD for games that need it.

Finally, if you have the $ 500 PS5 model, the one with the disc drive, you can just pop in one of your PS4 discs. Users of the cheapest all-digital edition won’t be able to do this, however.

The recorded data is another matter. PlayStation Plus members can download PS4 save files from the cloud and re-download them directly to the PS5. Just go to settings, open the menu “Saved data and game / application settings” and click on “Cloud storage”. This will bring up a list of all the saved data you have ever downloaded, automatically or manually, for each game you have played on PS4. I even found six year old save files for games I didn’t know I saved!

You don’t need to be a Sony Monthly Service member. In fact, you can move things around with a USB stick. First, plug one into your PS4. Go to the console settings and open the “Application Saved Data Management” menu. Click on the first option, then select “Copy to USB storage device.” This should bring up a list of all the games that you have save data for. You can highlight games in bulk or enter a specific game and copy save files piecemeal. Once you have selected what you want to add, click on “Copy”.

Back on your PS5, head to the “Saved data and game / app settings” menu. (You know how to find it now.) Go to the PS4 Saved Data submenu and select the option for a USB drive. This will display a list of all the recorded data that you have stored on the USB drive. Just select the ones you want and click “Copy”.

Now suppose none of the above steps work for you. In your settings, if you open the “System” menu, open the “System Software” submenu and select “Data Transfer”, you will see an option to transfer items from your PS4 to your PS5 via a local network, at next to a series of prompts that will guide you through the process. In the system’s user manual (yes, the one on physical, real paper!) Sony says that a lot of your files – data backup, user information, downloaded content – can come with you.

I agree with you: I chose not to try this method. My PS5 setup made me realize how filthy my PS4 has remained over the years – all the errant game demos, the errant save data, the one-gigabyte PS Plus titles that seemed intriguing but to me. quickly lost. There was enough digital dust on my PS4’s internal storage to choke me. The ability to retrieve important items is of course welcome. But this is a new generation we are talking about, full of potential and promise. Sometimes flipping a new leaf is worth leaving some of the old stuff by the wayside.

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