Backup/Copy PS4 Hard Drive

[Frybird]

Good Day, Sirs and Madames,

last week, i finally got a PS4. I came prepared and wanted to upgrade to a larger Hard Drive immediately, however i ran into some problems and needed to replace the replacement hard-drive and still use the stock one for now.

Now, i already seen that you can backup your save files on USB and/or Online, however when i finally can upgrade my hard drive, i'd like to minimize the hassle of re-downloading games and apps and DLC if possible.

I do have a portable HDD enclosure that fits with the size of the hard drive to connect it to a PC via USB.
Is it possible to copy the entire PS4 hard drive to PC, and move the files to the new one? Or, to be more precise, will it work or will my PS4 reject it due to licensing or whatever?

 

[SnowyGamester]

From what I can gather you can make an exact clone of your original hard drive and the PS4 won't be able to tell the difference, the problem being that it will have the exact same partitions which as far as I can tell can't be extended with any existing tool because of the non standard partition format. To put it simply you can copy the hard drive but in addition to having the contents from the original it will also appear to be the same size. There may be tools released in the future that will be able to do it but I can't find any that have been released yet...it may not even be possible because the PS4 may recognise the change in partition size and reject it for that reason.

 

[Frybird]

From what I can gather you can make an exact clone of your original hard drive and the PS4 won't be able to tell the difference, the problem being that it will have the exact same partitions which as far as I can tell can't be extended with any existing tool because of the non standard partition format. To put it simply you can copy the hard drive but in addition to having the contents from the original it will also appear to be the same size. There may be tools released in the future that will be able to do it but I can't find any that have been released yet...it may not even be possible because the PS4 may recognise the change in partition size and reject it for that reason.

So if i understand you right, then you aren't even able to copy the Harddrive Files to a PC (wich, now that i think about it, makes sense with piracy and such)?

Well, i guess then i'll have to go the old fashioned way and re-download everything once i upgrade.

But thank you for the Info, despite my CAPTCHA claiming that "it doesn't count" : ).