PS5: Can You Use a Disk Drive with a PS5 Digital Edition?

The PS5 launched in two discrete models: an all-digital, disk-less version and a version with a disk drive. There are plenty of reasons to prefer one edition over whether that’s because of the digital edition’s $400 price tag compared to the base model’s $500 one or personal preferences on physical versus digital media. Whatever the reason, the digital edition seems to be just as popular as the base model.

While many people are happy to embrace the shift away from physical media in favor of fully digital libraries, some digital edition PS5 owners are realizing that, although they may not be buying tons of physical copies of games anymore, the PS5 is still a solid Blu-Ray player. Without a disk drive built into the console, however, it won’t be able to read anything which has caused owners to wonder if they’re able to outfit their digital edition PS5 with a disk drive of their own. Here’s everything you need to know about outfitting a PS5 with an external disk drive.

Can You Add a Disk Drive to a PS5 Digital Edition?

In addition to being a Blu-Ray player, physical games aren’t completely gone which means that those with a disk-less PS5 are also unable to borrow physical copies from friends or libraries in order to try them out. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to attach an external disk drive to a digital edition PS5. Although there are plenty of USB disk readers out there that can connect to laptops and other disk drive-less devices, the PS5 wouldn’t recognize the attachment if you plugged it into it.

Because you can’t connect an external disk drive to a PS5, it’s worth considering paying the extra $100 for a base model that comes with a disk drive built into the hardware, even if you aren’t planning on playing a whole lot of physical games. Unless you have a dedicated Blu-Ray player, you may find yourself in a situation where you aren’t able to play a disk.

Similar to the digital edition PS5, you aren’t able to attach an external disk drive to a base PS5 model. Even though it might seem a bit redundant, there could be a situation where the PS5’s disk drive isn’t working and the owner is interested in using an external drive as a replacement, but it won’t work, same as the digital version.

There were rumors in 2022 that Sony would be merging its PS5 editions into a single, new version that features a removable disk drive, however, there has been little concrete evidence to suggest that something like that is actually in the works. Even if it is, it wouldn’t change the fact that current PS5 owners aren’t able to use external disk drives for their consoles.