Despite the ongoing controversy surrounding the new PS5 Slim and its detachable disc drive, reports claim that users can actually swap the additional piece of hardware on and off their console fairly easily. So much so that removing the disc drive and moving it to another PS5 Slim takes a few minutes… If you have internet access, of course.
At first, users thought that once the detachable disc drive was assigned to your PS5 it would be locked to that console and serial number. Gamers were worried that this online registration would prevent them from lending a disc drive to a friend or perhaps selling it if they no longer used it. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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In a YouTube video from Mystic, he reveals that users can actually swap the disc drive around to other consoles once it has been registered. Keep in mind that the new PS5 Slim will still require internet for its first-time use with the hardware. After the drive has been registered, you are free to use it without the internet.
Should you swap the disc drive onto another PS5 Slim, there shouldn’t be any problem either. The system will ask to register the disc drive to the new console and once done, it will function normally. You don’t even need to deregister it.
It seems that while this whole disc drive registration is a pain at first, it hasn’t been implemented to lock the hardware to your console. It doesn’t tie the disc drive to your PS5 Slim or prevent you from accessing the drive on another console. The online registration is simply there for DMCA purposes so that users don’t find ways to bypass the disc licenses on these Blu-ray drives.
Of course, users are still worried that sometime later down the line Sony might turn off these disc drive verification servers. As a result, you won’t be able to register the unit. However, I am sure the company will issue a firmware update to bypass this one-time online handshake before that happens.
