Upgrade or Changing PS4 Hard Disk Drive Easily!

Recently have purchased multiple games for my PS4 from Amazon.  As most games are made with great details and video, the size of the DVD in the disc are not sufficient and end up after installation there will be more downloads required to have the game started.  Just to state one, GTA V is need another 50 GB of space.  This will easily fill up your default 500 GB hard disk drive (HDD) that comes with your PS4.

Luckily, Sony allows users to change their dard disk drive without voiding your warranty (unlike what Microsoft is doing with their XBOX).  So if you refer to Sony KB, you will see the steps to change your HDD.  Of course this is quite an easily job but I did hit some issues which isn't too hard to resolve but for the non-IT people, they might end up hours of troubleshooting.

So here I am to share this experience.  I did not purchase any HDD from local stores as this cost more and I do not think the need to pay so much just for gaming and if I lose the data, well too bad.  With Google, I did a search and end up with two model of external hard disk drive that are able to extracted out from their case without soldered to a USB 3.0 connector.  This is important as most external hard disk drive that are shipped out have this soldered on so that users cannot matter with them.

I found Seagate Expansion STBX2000401 2TB and Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB are used by many.  I end up with Seagate Expansion as it was the cheapest during Green Monday on Amazon and since it also shipped to Singapore.  Many asked me why I did not get the 2.5" external hard disk drive and end up with a external USB hard disk drive?  For whatever reason, a default 2.5" external hard disk drive is more expensive and I do not know why this is so.  Perhaps someone could advise me further.

So here are the steps that I did in a summary you can also refer to Sony Update page to be update to date here (remember to look at the New Installation Section):

1. Download the FULL Installation PS4UPDATE.PUP here (at time of writing this is 2.02. This should be over 500 MB for New Installation and over 200 MB for Update).   Note the different.
2. Back up my games profile and settings into a USB thumb drive (If you have PSN Plus you can backup to the PSN Plus Storage).
3. Shutdown your PS4.
4. Change your HDD.
5. Press the power on button and hold it for 7 seconds and you will hear a beep sound to boot to safe mode.
6. Select Reinitialize System (Reinstall System Software).
7. Copy back the Game Profile and Settings back to PS4 (If you have PSN Plus, this will be copied back if it does not just copy back from PSN Plus).
8. Reinstall all your games from Disc and download games previously downloaded from My Library (I could not find the place to download those games I downloaded previously free due to PSN Plus, so they are can found in My Library).

I hope this helps in anyone trying to upgrade or change HDD on PS4 much easier.

Enjoy your games!