How to Format PS4 Hard Drive for PC in Windows 10/8/7

If you’ve recently upgraded the hard drive in your PS4 and want to use it on your computer – you’ll find that the drive doesn’t appear in Windows Explorer.

This is because the PS4 uses a format not recognised by Windows.

To make it work in Windows you’ll need to remove the existing partitions and create a new partition that is recognised by Windows.

These steps will show how using Windows 10, but will be similar for Windows 7 and 8. This process DOES NOT require you to install third-party software, a potential source of malware.

  1. Connect the PS4 hard drive to the computer (e.g. using a USB caddy or internal SATA cable)
  2. Right-click on the Windows start button and choose ‘Disk Management’
  3. All the drives connected to the computer will be listed in the lower half of the Disk Management window.
  4. It’s critically important that you select the right disk – if you do this to another disk you will loose data.
  5. You can use the size to tell if you have the right drive, as well as it having many partitions (15+)
  6. The first thing to do is to delete all the existing partitions – this is done by right-clicking on each of the blocks and choosing ‘Delete Volume’
  7. When prompted, click ‘Yes’ to confirm
  8. Repeat the process for all partitions until you see one large ‘Unallocated’ block
  9. Now right-click on the unallocated block and choose ‘New Simple Volume’
  10. The New Simple Volume Wizard will open. Keep clicking next to progress through, you can also choose a name for the drive under the ‘Volume label’.
  11. When the wizard is finished you will now have a new drive available in Windows Explorer for the old PS4 hard drive.
  12. You can now close the Disk Management window.

Wanting to use it as a portable USB drive? Check out how to convert the drive to FAT32 for PS4 compatibility here: Format USB drives beyond FAT32 32GB limit – for PS4 and MAC OS