If you’ve tried grabbing some screenshots or videos off your PS5 with a USB, you may have received the message “This USB drive’s file system is unsupported.” That may sound pretty blunt, but don’t give up hope, the secret is that you’re using the wrong USB file format or external hard drive format for the PS5. Rather than buying a new drive, you can use a computer to reformat your USB to a supported file system. We’ll take you through the steps to fix the file system error and enable the PS5 USB file format below.
How to fix 'USB drive’s file system is unsupported' PS5 error message
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To fix the “USB drive's file system is unsupported” error, you need to make sure that your PS5 USB or external hard drive is reformatted to exFAT or FAT32. The NTFS and other formats are not supported by the PS5. We recommend using the exFAT format, as FAT32 includes restrictions on the file sizes which can be copied. Not good if you’re trying to move games or videos over.
Reformatting your USB for the PS5 can be done fairly simply via a PC, using the steps below. Bear in mind that reformatting will wipe any data currently on the USB drive, so be sure to transfer off anything you want to keep before you start.
How to reformat your USB to exFAT
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Reformatting a USB drive using Windows is extremely simple. Connect the device to your computer and open File Explorer. On the left side of the window you should be able to see the connected USB drive underneath Documents, Downloads, etc., and your main storage drives (typically labelled something like C: and D:). In our case, the USB drive appears as drive F:. Make sure the USB drive you're selecting is the correct one, then right click on it and select Format from the pop up menu.
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This will open a new window which lists the capacity, file system, and allocation unit size of the USB drive. Click the file system box for a drop down selection and choose exFAT. Make sure that the Quick Format box is checked, then hit Start. Depending on the size of your USB or external hard drive, this process could take some time. Once it is finished though, you’ll have an empty USB drive in a supported file system for the PS5.
That’s all we can teach you regarding how to fix the PS5 file system is unsupported error. If you’ve reformatted your drive to exFAT, it should now be in the PS5 USB file system format and work smoothly when plugged into one of the USB ports. For more PS5 information, click here to visit the hub page for the console.