PS5 Known Issues Include Storage and Rest Mode Glitches

While it turns out that your Xbox Series X (likely) won’t spontaneously burst into flames, it’s inevitable that some early PS5 and Xbox Series X units will suffer from technical and hardware issues.

The good news is that it doesn’t seem like the PS5 and Xbox Series X suffer from notable glitches quite as impactful as the infamous “Red Ring of Death” that plagued the launch of the Xbox 360. The bad news is that there are already reports of dead PS5s floating in the internet wild. In fact, popular YouTube game channel ACG recently tweeted that their review PS5 has already died:

P.1. At this time my PS5 is 100% dead. I was having the storage rebuild issues others reported but mine escalated to full errors and network issues/boot. Sony and I were working through troubleshooting when it died completely. So at this time I will be moving content around…

— ACG (@JeremyPenter) November 10, 2020

Based on the user reports and official information that’s currently available, it seems that it’s highly unlikely that your PS5 will die outright as long as you give it plenty of room to breathe and follow all basic operational instructions. Even the ACG reviewer noted that his console was experiencing unusual glitches and performance issues before it died completely, which suggests that it was a largely isolated incident involving a problem unique to their hardware.

Having said that, it does sound like there are a few PS5 issues that are common enough to be wary of and take necessary precautions against until more information is avialable. Here are some the most notable of those known PS5 issues and what you should do about them.

PS5’s Rest Mode Can Crash The Console (Especially in Spider-Man: Miles Morales)

This certainly seems to be the most common PS5 issue at the moment. In fact, I encountered this problem myself just last night and immediately worried that my PS5 had bitten the dust.

Basically, it seems that leaving your PS5 in rest mode can cause it to trigger an improper shutdown and initiate a database rebuilding process. While specific reports of this problem vary somewhat, it’s worth noting that most users indicate that they encountered this issue when they left their PS5 in rest mode while running Spider-Man: Miles Morales. For what it’s worth, I was able to successfully run the PS5 in rest mode when I selected that option from the console’s home screen, but I did trigger the crash glitch when I entered rest mode while Miles Morales was still running.

For the time being, it seems like the best thing to do is just shut down your PS5 rather than leave it in rest mode. If you really want to be careful, it might be a good idea to open your PS5’s “Settings” menu, choose “Power Savings,” and select the option that prevents your PS5 from automatically entering rest mode.

This does seem to be the most common problem at the moment, so while it’s not a guarantee that you’ll experience it, the risk is great enough to take some basic precautions for the time being.

The PS5’s Rear USB Ports May Cause Data Transfer Issues

This issue may come down to two separate problems, but we’ve heard multiple reports of system crashes and other technical problems from PS5 users who have tried to run external storage drives through the rear USB ports.

The question at the moment is whether or not this problem has to do with a data transfer glitch, hardware incompatibility with certain external drives, problems with the USB ports, or some combination of all of the above. I’ve used the PS5’s rear USB ports to charge a second controller while the console was running Demon’s Souls, so it doesn’t necessarily seem that the ports themselves are inherently the issue (or at least that straight up using them will always cause problems).

Given the number of reports we’ve heard about external drives not working correctly when hooked up to the console’s rear USB reports, though, it seems safe to recommend that you use the console’s front USB ports for data transfers until we hear more about an official investigation into any potential problems. At the very least, we wouldn’t advise trying to run anything directly from an external drive connected to the back of the PS5 or to try running PS5 apps while an external drive is connected to the back of the console.

Transferring PS4 Data to PS5 May Not Be Working As Intended

This seems to be the least common of the known PS5 issues at the moment, but reports of this problem are still common enough to merit a mention.

As we noted before, most PS5 data transfer issues seem to caused by hooking up an external drive to the console’s rear USB ports. It doesn’t sound like that problem is affecting all users, but many users who do report issues with the transfer process have stated that is how they were trying to transfer data when the issues occurred.

However, other PS5 owners have noted that data transfers generally seem “off” at the moment with transfers from the PS4 to the PS5 running especially slow or, in some cases, not working at all.

What’s the problem? There doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer at the moment, but some speculate that hooking a LAN cable up to the back of the PS5 could cause some issues. As for slow transfers and instances of data not transferring at all, it’s possible that those issues are related to problems with individual files or even just optimization issues within the transfer process itself.

If you’re trying to be cautious, it seems that the safest way to transfer files from PS4 to PS5 is through a WiFi connection.