I had known for some time that I wanted to replace the hard drive in my PS4 with a 2TB drive, as the stock 500GB drive was long ago put through its paces. For many months, each time a new game released, I had to go through and delete games off the drive just to install new ones.

Of course that wasn’t ideal, but I had just one issue with replacing the drive: I didn’t want to lose P.T. in the process, so I had to plan my new drive carefully.

The PS3 has a wonderful feature where you can completely transfer one system to another, however the PS4 (at least to my research) does not. We decided that the best way to try to facilitate the change was to buy a new PS4, upgrade the hard drive on that one, and try to make it work.

Allow me to veer just a bit here.

I struggle when technology doesn’t work as it should. If there is an issue, it really bothers me. I don’t know why this is, but it is, and I’ve learned to do my best to solve whatever the problem is by research. Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t, but I still struggle.

So when faced with trying to install a hard drive (something I’ve never done), I was a bit nervous. I did so much research. I triple checked that I bought the best drive I could. I scoured through my Game Informer archives to find an article that explained explicitly how to replace the drive and get the system up and running.

Basically, I super did my homework.

But getting P.T. on that new drive took some doing. All I have to say is thank goodness for the internet and all the useful people on it, as one of those people found a way to keep the game, and for that, I’m truly grateful. All I had to do was delete everything off my old PS4 except P.T., perform a system backup to USB, then use that USB backup to perform a system restore on the new PS4.

P.T. saved!

Words can’t express how happy I was to see P.T. on my new system, yet I wasn’t completely assured until I started it up and it did, indeed, play as before.

Success!

I’ve never been necessarily shy about experimenting with technology. I know just enough to get around some of the more technical aspects of things, but this was a whole new level for me. I’d never opened up an electronic device with the intention of taking something out and replacing it with something else.

Unless you count batteries.

I’ve replaced batteries. I’m pretty good at it.

After I made sure everything about the new system was up and running, I started the lengthy process of redownloading all applicable games and their DLC. Just redownloading the Destiny update took two hours (oof) and I’m still not done reinstalling all my disc-based games. I’m sure I will be doing that here and there this weekend to get everything back up to speed.

Now if I could just get the home button on my iPad mini working again…

Somehow I think it will require a professional to fix that one.

What is the most technologically advanced thing you have done for the love of video games? Was it a breeze or did you have to do research to make it happen?