Tom's Hardware Verdict
Seagate's Game Drive External SSD performs well and looks like a PlayStation accessory. But similarly performing alternatives are available for much less.
Reasons to buy
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Good performance
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PlayStation aesthetics
Reasons to avoid
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Very expensive compared to similarly-performing alternatives
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How much are you willing to pay for external storage that matches the look of your PS5? Seagate hopes the answer is $129.99 for a 1TB SSD and $219.99 for 2TB, which is roughly twice the price of similarly-performing alternatives. The Seagate Game Drive External SSD sports a white and black exterior and Playstation logo that at least partially accounts for the drive's high price. It's also one of the faster 10Gbps drives we've tested in our PC-based benchmarks.
But Sony only allows external storage to be used for running older PS4 games and backing up PS5 titles , so it's unclear how much speed really matters. If you're mostly using this drive for backups and so you don't have to re-download games that you move off of your internal drive, you can just start the process when you're done with a gaming session and walk away until the next time you want to game.
Seagate tries to sweeten the deal with this drive by including a two-week trial of PlayStation Plus Premium, but it doesn't apply to existing members. And I feel like if you're considering buying an external drive to match your PS5, there's a good chance you're already a subscriber.
Seagate Game Drive External SSD Specs
| Product | 1TB | 2TB |
| Pricing | $129.99 | $219.99 |
| Interface / Protocol | USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) | USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) |
| Included | USB Type-C to Type-A cable | USB Type-C to Type-A cable |
| Sequential Read | Up to 1,000 MBps | Up to 1,000 MBps |
| Sequential Write | Up to 1,000 MBps | Up to 1,000 MBps |
| Dimensions | 3.78 x 1.97 x 0.43 | 3.78 x 1.97 x 0.43 |
| Weight | 2.45 ounces (69.5 g) | 2.45 ounces (69.5 g) |
| Warranty | 3 years | 3 years |
Design of the Seagate Game Drive External SSD
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At 3.78 x 1.97 x 0.43 inches and 69.5 grams, with a black plastic bottom and matte-white top and sides, the Seagate Game Drive External SSD certainly looks like it belongs next to a PS5 (though PS4 support is also listed on the box). There's a PlayStation logo on the top and a blue light bar on the bottom. Part of me wishes the company had gone a step further to emulate the distinctive shape of Sony's console, but Seagate drive's shape is just your typical storage rectangle.
The drive comes with both USB Type-A and USB Type-C cables and a 3-year warranty, as well as the two-week trial of PlayStation Plus Premium.
Comparison Products
Most of the drives we've tested recently sport faster 20Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen2 2x2) interfaces, but the Game Drive External SSD's primary competition on our charts with be the previously mentioned Silicon Power PX10 (currently $125 in the 2TB capacity), and Crucial's X9 Pro ($163 for 2TB as of this writing), both 10Gbps drives. Given the Seagate drive's $220 launch price, it needs to impress when it comes to performance. And in many ways it does.
PlayStation 5 Testing
Our PlayStation 5 testing was fairly limited.
Writing 193GB to the drive via the faster USB-A ports at the back took 16 minutes and 14 seconds (and 10 seconds longer via the USB-C port on the front of the console, likely just down to run-to-run variance), and 26 minutes and 30 seconds to read from the drive to the PS5's internal SSD.
We also did the same task using a Seagate Xbox 5TB hard drive. The same 193GB folder took more than twice as long, 32 minutes and 52 seconds, to write to the external hard drive, and slightly longer – 1,856 seconds – to write the data back to the console's internal storage. In short, as you might expect, it's much faster to write to this external SSD than it is to write to a spinning-platter hard drive. And some of that speed advantage carries over to reading from the drive, onto the PS5's internal storage, but not as much as you might think.
Windows Testing
Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark
PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.
On this first test, the Seagate Game drive impressively comes in first place, beating out drives like the Crucial X10 Pro and Adata's SD810, that technically have twice the bandwidth.
Transfer Rates – DiskBench
We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.
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In this real-world performance test, Seagate's drive looks less impressive. Sure, it's not surprising that the plethora of 20Gbps drives at the top of the chart perform much better. But the Game Drive lands just below Silicon Power's much cheaper PX10 10Gbps drive and just above (at least on read speeds) Kingston's DataTraveler Max, which is a flash drive (albeit a fast one).
Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.
The synthetic large-file results here are similar to our real-world results above. Segate's drive performs well for a 10Gbps drive, but is slightly slower than the cheaper (and smaller) Silicon Power alternative.
When it comes to random writes/IOPS, something that isn't likely all that important for a backup drive, Seagate's Game Drive lands comfortably in the middle, while the competing Silicon Power drive sits impressively at the top of our chart.
Sustained Write Performance
A drive's rated write specifications are only a piece of the performance picture. Most external SSDs (just like their internal counterparts) implement a write cache, or a fast area of flash, programmed to perform like faster SLC, that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds often suffer tremendously when the workload saturates the cache and slips into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.
This is the most grueling of our storage benchmarks, and the one most important for creative professionals who move lots of data. Here, the Seagate Game Drive External SSD delivered write speeds above 1,000 MBps for an impressive 10 minutes, before becoming more erratic, but remaining close to its peak speeds.
This is impressive sustained performance, and better than the Silicon Power drive, which dropped to the mid-800 MBps range after less than a minute. Still, for gaming purposes plugged into a PS5, you wouldn't notice the difference between these two drives. This kind of sustained performance is better suited to professional workloads.
Conclusion
Seagate's Game Drive External SSD is a good performer for a 10Gbps drive, at least in our Windows-based testing where we have comparative data. And it will certainly serve you well for running PS4 titles or backing up PS5 titles or other game files – just as nearly every external SSD would. But its launch price makes Seagate's drive a hard sell unless you're a collector and / or a big PlayStation fan who wants your external storage to match your gaming console.
The Game Drive's street price will likely drop from the MSRP, as we've seen with Samsung's T5 Evo, which was also priced too high at launch. But at $129.99 (1TB) and $219.99 (2TB), Seagate's drive needs to dip 40-50% before it's worth considering for those unwilling to pay a hefty price premium for the PlayStation branding.
MORE: Best SSDs
MORE: Best External SSDs
MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs
After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.
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kb7rky JESUS CHRIST...$100 difference between the two? I can get a 4TB SSD from Crucial for about the price of that 2TB Seagate.Reply -
Avro Arrow Reply
Well, it has always been true that there are people who are willing to pay stupid amounts of money in the name of "having the best".kb7rky said:JESUS CHRIST...$100 difference between the two? I can get a 4TB SSD from Crucial for about the price of that 2TB Seagate.
Consider that there are lots of people who are insane enough to buy an RTX 4090. That card costs $1650USD, which is an astonishing 83% more expensive than the RX 7900 XTX. Meanwhile, the 4090 is only a (relatively) measly 23% faster than the XTX or 4080.
Like, sure, I can understand someone choosing an RTX 4080 Super over an RX 7900 XTX because the performance is the same and it's only $60 more. The XTX has 50% more VRAM while the RTX 4080 has DLSS and far better RT performance. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me for people who want DLSS and RT, in fact, it makes perfect sense.
However, IIRC, the RTX 4090 has out-sold both of those cards combined.
If it's "the best", there will always be rich/stupid noobs who are willing to pay. -
Avro Arrow Reply
I hear you. The only reason that I have an XTX is because Newegg had some insane open-box deal in August of 2023. I was perfectly happy with my RX 6800 XT but when I saw an ASRock RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC for (the equivalent of) only $850USD, I couldn't say no. Even now, over a year later...good luck finding an XTX for under $900USD.kb7rky said:To think I dropped around $200 on a used RTX3060, when I could have mortgaged the house on an all-new RTX4080.
Stupid me 😛
Good thing I read the articles regarding the problems those high-end cards have been having lately, like melting power connectors, cracked PCBs, etc. Saved myself a whole <Mod Edit> of headaches.
Only reason I got an RTX card was the fact that Unreal Engine won't run on anything less 😜
...not to mention older games sure look fantastic on the new card 😆
As long as Nvidia will continue to support their older cards, I see no reason to upgrade past what I have now. I don't need a 40XX series, and I'm not too sure about the rumored 50XX series.
Remember that, at the time, a lot of TechTubers were predicting another GPU shortage because nVidia (and probably AMD to a lesser degree) were starting to dedicate their TSMC fab allocations towards AI and other data centre applications instead of consumer-grade video cards. I reasoned that, with 24GB of VRAM, I would be able to ride out the storm (so to speak) if another GPU shortage occurred. I got lucky the first time back in 2017 when I found an R9 Fury for $400CAD while the RX 580 was around $800.
The second time, I didn't get lucky at all except that I managed to get one of those gorgeous reference RX 6800 XTs for $1700CAD including tax. As bad as that was, the XTX was selling for about $2200CAD before tax which was about $2500 with tax so I saved about $800 (compared to the insane pricing at the stores).
I'm a firm believer in using what you have until it's no longer capable of playing the games you want to play. Because of this, I'll probably keep using my R7-5800X3D and RX 7900 XTX until the second generation of AM6 comes along. :p -
BadBoyGreek Reply
The crappy thing now is that high end Nvidia GPU prices have shifted from "priced highly due to shortages" to "because they can". Lack of real competition from AMD isn't helping the situation, and it's especially not going to improve now that AMD has pretty much said they're going to abandon high end GPUs in favor of "the 80%" and improving their APU architecture.Avro Arrow said:I hear you. The only reason that I have an XTX is because Newegg had some insane open-box deal in August of 2023. I was perfectly happy with my RX 6800 XT but when I saw an ASRock RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC for (the equivalent of) only $850USD, I couldn't say no. Even now, over a year later...good luck finding an XTX for under $900USD.
Remember that, at the time, a lot of TechTubers were predicting another GPU shortage because nVidia (and probably AMD to a lesser degree) were starting to dedicate their TSMC fab allocations towards AI and other data centre applications instead of consumer-grade video cards. I reasoned that, with 24GB of VRAM, I would be able to ride out the storm (so to speak) if another GPU shortage occurred. I got lucky the first time back in 2017 when I found an R9 Fury for $400CAD while the RX 580 was around $800.
The second time, I didn't get lucky at all except that I managed to get one of those gorgeous reference RX 6800 XTs for $1700CAD including tax. As bad as that was, the XTX was selling for about $2200CAD before tax which was about $2500 with tax so I saved about $800 (compared to the insane pricing at the stores).
I'm a firm believer in using what you have until it's no longer capable of playing the games you want to play. Because of this, I'll probably keep using my R7-5800X3D and RX 7900 XTX until the second generation of AM6 comes along. :p
If you want "the best", Nvidia is now the only game left, and they'll keep pricing their GPUs to the moon accordingly. -
kb7rky Indeed..."simply because they can".Reply
What a ridiculous business model...that seems to be working in their favor. As long as there are idiots who feel the need to have the latest and greatest GPU, Nvidia will keep cranking out the 40 series, ad infinitum...
As PT Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute!" (or at least, the quote is attributed to him). -
BadBoyGreek Reply
What makes it even worse is the poor optimization of a lot of the PC releases in recent times. Take Final Fantasy XVI as the most recent example, it struggles even on the 4080 and 4090. It's a real slap in the face to be dropping close to or north of $2k for top end GPUs, expecting they'll be able to handle anything one can throw at them and instead being disappointed that they come up short.kb7rky said:Indeed..."simply because they can".
What a ridiculous business model...that seems to be working in their favor. As long as there are idiots who feel the need to have the latest and greatest GPU, Nvidia will keep cranking out the 40 series, ad infinitum...
As PT Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute!" (or at least, the quote is attributed to him).
Granted, a lot of that is the fault of the devs who make the games who don't know how to optimize their games properly, but it's for that reason that buying the top end just doesn't make sense anymore. The last high end GPU I bought was the 3080 Ti, which I'm still using in my current PC and handles almost every game at full details at 1440p, but FFXVI was practically unplayable without turning the details down significantly. Never again will I splurge for the highest end GPUs.