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What Important Data Can a PlayStation 4 Hold?

Here’s the data a PS4 can have inside:

  • Saving data: This refers to the information we generate in our video game games. It is usually not sensitive information, but it is convenient to remove it from our machine before putting it up for sale.
  • sessions: any service that requires a username and password. For example, if you’re playing Fortnite, it’s normal for you to automatically access the video game. If you don’t remove this session from your account, the next owner will have access to your account. The same goes for any other game on this system or even your PlayStation Network account.
  • Integrations: The PlayStation also allows users to connect certain accounts to certain social networks. Imagine if someone had access to your Twitter account, Discord or some other platform simply because they bought you a PS4.
  • Payment details: closely related to the previous case. If we put a credit card on one of our accounts, someone could make a payment without our permission. This can be really dangerous, and more than enough reason to clean the PlayStation before putting it up for sale. If your PlayStation Network account is logged into the console, anyone with access to it can make purchases, impersonate our identities, and even engage in some sort of criminal practice that could have our account banned from Sony’s servers.

How to hard reset a PS4?

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In the previous block we already told you about the dangers of selling a console with our personal information. Currently, selling or giving away a console is like doing the same with a PC or a mobile phone.

On computers, we usually do a format before putting the machine up for sale. There are those who even trade in the hard drive for a new one to prevent malicious people from accessing sensitive information. However, video game consoles usually have a system that is more similar to what we see in mobile phones. The PlayStation 4 has a tool that allows you to erase all information this one. This way the next owner of the device can take it out of the box, turn it on and configure it as if it were a brand new machine.

In the case of the PS4 we have to go to the menu of Settings from our console, in the entry «initialization» and find the «Initialize PS4», which will allow us to perform this formatting operation.

Once inside this option we can choose between two types of initialization::

Quick Initialization

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This allows us to erase our data and reset the console to a factory state. But beware, this process does not completely erase the data.

If you have some computer knowledge, we’ll just tell you that this type of configuration works exactly like a quick format. The controller ignores the information written to the disk and only considers new data.

In most cases, this type of formatting is enough if we leave our console to a person we know. A family member, a lifelong friend to whom we are going to bequeath the console for a good price… but it’s not the ideal method if you’re going to leave your console in the hands of a complete stranger. The downside of this process is that with the right tools, information that we think we’ve deleted can be recovered. If your PlayStation 4 is up for sale and the next owner is not someone you trust, we recommend that you do the second method that we are going to explain to you.

Full initialization

This process is very plus slowly. In fact, it can be completed in many hours. However, it is completely safe delete every byte of data from PS4 hard drive, to ensure that no information can be recovered from it. By doing this, even with specialized tools they will not be able to extract any type of important data from the console.

This process cannot be reversedso before we do that, we need to make sure there’s nothing left on the console that we want to save (like screenshots or browser bookmarks) and that information like saved games is properly synced to the cloud.

Once our PS4 is fully initialized, we can sell it without any fear. If you’re going to do the second method and you think the slowness of the process might make you desperate, do these steps at night and move your PS4 away from where you sleep – so the fan noise doesn’t bother you.