USB & Storage

USB Ports

Port	Type	Speed	Boot?
Front bottom	Type-C	USB 3.x	Recommended
Front top	Type-A	USB 2.0	Possible (slow)
Rear	Type-A	USB 3.x	Yes

All ports usable for peripherals once booted.

USB Drive (Required)

Minimum 64 GB reccomended. If you only have a small USB drive, see M.2 from Small USB below.

If an M.2 enclosure is not being detected, try a different cable (USB 3.x) and a different port before assuming the drive is faulty.

M.2 Compatibilty

NVMe only. SATA M.2 drives do not work - confirmed not working regardless of adapter or enclosure.

Gen3 NVMe drives are officially unsupported by Sony but can be unlocked. See Gen3 NVMe Unlock below. Sub-250 GB drives also work once unlocked.

Community-tested drive compatibility: M.2 Compatibility List - also the original spreadsheet

Gen3 NVMe Unlock

Sony blocks Gen3 NVMe drives in PS5 claiming they're too slow (5500 MB/s minimum). In practice the performance difference is ~1-2 seconds on loading screens - not a real issue, especially for Linux.

The PS5 checks a small header at the start of the drive. Writing the first 2 MB from any PS5-formatted Gen4 drive onto your Gen3 drive bypasses the check entirely.

What you need:

• A Gen4 NVMe that has been formatted by a PS5 (or use a pre-made dump)
• Your Gen3 NVMe
• A USB NVMe enclosure or a PC with an M.2 slot

Steps:

# 1. Put the Gen4 drive in your enclosure, connect to PC
# Dump the first 2 MB
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=ps5_gen4_header.bin bs=1M count=2

# 2. Swap to your Gen3 drive
# Write the header to it
sudo dd if=ps5_gen4_header.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=2

Then put the Gen3 drive in the PS5. It will be detected and formatted normally.

No Gen4 drive? Use Bringus' dump

Bringus Studios documented this method and provides a pre-made 2 MB dump in the video description: youtube.com/watch?v=Uds315QBUnE

Note: pre-made dumps may not work on higher firmwares. If it doesn't work, borrow a Gen4 drive and take your own dump.

Do not reformat the Gen3 drive on PS5

Reformatting via PS5 Settings → Storage wipes the unlocked header. If you do it by accident, just redo the 2 MB write from PC.

Firmware compatibility: Confirmed working on 4.00, 4.03, 4.51. Failed reports on 5.xx and above are suspected user error - most likely using the wrong dump. If it doesn't work, take your own dump from a PS5-formatted Gen4 drive instead of using a shared one. See M.2 Compatibility for full results.

M.2 Setup

Available on FW 4.00+. M.2 is used exclusively for Linux - cannot be used for PS5 game storage simultaneously.

Install your M.2 following Sony's official guide. If it was previously used for games, reformat it first: Settings → Storage → M.2 SSD Storage.

Initialize the M.2 from Linux:

cd ps5-linux-tools
sudo ./m2_init
sudo reboot

If PS5 asks you to format the M.2 again after reboot, report it in Discord with your M.2 model and size.

Install Linux image onto M.2:

cd ps5-linux-tools
chmod +x ./m2_install.sh
sudo ./m2_install.sh --install /path/to/ps5-ubuntu2604.img

Boot from M.2:

cd ps5-linux-tools
chmod +x ./m2_exec.sh
sudo ./m2_exec.sh

To always boot from M.2, edit /boot/efi/cmdline.txt and change root=LABEL=ubuntu2604 to root=LABEL=ubuntu2604-m2. You still need the USB drive for the FAT32 partition.

M.2 from Small USB (No 64 GB Drive Available)

If you only have a small USB drive and can't flash the full image, use the community rsync-based script as an alternative to m2_install.sh:

github.com/g4caos/ps5-linux-script

It syncs the live running Linux session directly onto the M.2 instead of requiring a pre-built image file.