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If we had to choose any one SSD to fill our system, it would be the WD Black SN7100. This PCIe 4.0 SSD comes in up to 4TB of capacity. The 2TB version that we tested was the fastest overall in our benchmarks. Because the drive uses a host memory buffer design for cache, as opposed to onboard DRAM, it's competitively priced, making it an excellent price-to-performance value.

Essentially, gaming consoles are computers so the same SSDs that are best for PCs are the also best for gaming consoles. That said, the excellent performance and super-generous TBW rating of Seagate's Game Drive PS5 SSD makes it our current choice. The DRAM design (which uses onboard memory for secondary caching) results in class-leading random ops performance, as well a full compatibility with PS5.

An SSD, or solid state drive, is a non-mechanical device that uses non-volatile memory (generally NAND) to store data. An HDD, or hard disk drive, is mechanical and stores data on spinning platters as magnetic marks. Read/write heads traverse the platter to seek and transfer data. Because of all the moving parts on an HDD, they have a higher chance of failure over time.

SSDs are excellent for long-term storage, though that depends on what you consider long term. Theoretically, the NAND memory cells, which are voltage traps, could leak over time and become unreadable, but in the decade or so that SSDs have been in heavy use, we've not seen this type of degradation. Short answer, a couple of decades, yes; a couple of millennia, perhaps not.