The PlayStation 5 is out in the wild now, and while most people are enjoying the new console, there are also players (on Reddit, ResetEra and elsewhere) reporting a variety of glitches and issues. In some cases, these issues have required factory resets of the PS5 hardware or outright bricked the system. Now, don’t get too worried – these kind of reports happen during pretty much every new console launch. Chances are your PS5 will be just fine. That said, there does seem to be two things that are causing most of the problems, and thankfully, both of them are fairly easily avoided.
The biggest culprit would seem to be external hard drives. While PS5 games can only played off the system’s internal solid-state drive, you can also plug in an external HDD and play PS4 games off that. Unfortunately, the feature currently has issues, with many encountering a “rebuild database” bug. Basically, you try to play a PS4 game, the game or PS5 crashes, and then you start getting “the database has corrupted, it will now rebuild” error messages. In some cases, these can lead to further issues or even the dreaded bricked system.
The other big issue seems to be entering rest mode while still in a game, particular Spider-Man Remastered for whatever reason. This can also lead to the rebuild database warnings. A few other people have also reported these issues popping up after transferring their PS4 data to their PS5, particularly if they opted to use a LAN cable to do it. On top of the database issues, IGN is also reporting a separate bug where certain games will get stuck in the PS5’s download queue.
This may all sound rather scary, but this is all just anecdotal at this point. We don’t know how widespread this really is, and as I said before, chances are you’ll be alright. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to take some precautions – until Sony addresses this with some system updates, you may want to avoid a) playing PS4 games off an external drive, and b) using rest mode while in games. You may also want to wait on transferring your PS4 data, but it feels like that’s a smaller risk, especially if you use WiFi to do it.
Now, if you do start getting rebuild database warnings, don’t panic. People have reportedly gotten rid of them by doing simple things like canceling downloads, restarting the system, or performing a factory reset. If you’re still having trouble, you can also contact PlayStation customer service.
The PlayStation 5 is available now in North America/Australia. The system launches in Europe on November 19. Any new PS5 owners out there? Have you had any issues?
