Questions about upgrading PS4 hard drive

[biggles]

https://support.playstation.com/s/article/Upgrade-PS4-HDD?language=en_US
I plan to use the official link above. This is to upgrade the original 500 GB drive to a 2 TB SSHD. The PS4 is the old, fat style system.

1. Does the external USB hard drive need to be empty to do the backup?
2. Does the external USB hard drive need for backup to be formatted using a particular file format?
3. Will it work with a USB 2.0 hard drive for the backup? I thought I read someplace else it needed to be a USB 3.0 external drive.

The Seagate SSHD below is the drive replacing the original 500 GB drive:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H2F3741/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[T4rd]

https://support.playstation.com/s/article/Upgrade-PS4-HDD?language=en_US
I plan to use the official link above. This is to upgrade the original 500 GB drive to a 2 TB SSHD. The PS4 is the old, fat style system.

1. Does the external USB hard drive need to be empty to do the backup?
2. Does the external USB hard drive need for backup to be formatted using a particular file format?
3. Will it work with a USB 2.0 hard drive for the backup? I thought I read someplace else it needed to be a USB 3.0 external drive.

The Seagate SSHD below is the drive replacing the original 500 GB drive:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H2F3741/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1 & 2. The console will prompt you to format/erase the entire drive to use as storage either when you plug it in or go to manage it in the settings if it's not already formatted to be used on the console, so it handles all that for you.
3. USB 2.0 will work, as that's all I had one time when I had to send my PS4 in for RMA and used an old USB 2.0 adapter to backup my stuff before I sent it in. It will just take hours to transfer at 2.0 speeds if your drive is mostly full.. think it took mine 3-4 hours for my mostly-full 500GB PS4 at the time to transfer my games/saves to the external drive.