Hacking merging FPKG updates into base game - disadvantages?

[CyanideDN]

Hi all. I'm just starting my PS4 jailbreak and noticed that the FPKG game updates are pretty large (sometimes almost as big as the base game FPKG). Obviously this takes up a lot of external disc storage, so to optimize storage I started looking into merging PKG (base + update game files) to reduce the size and possibly installation time.

However, what are some potential disadvantages with merging update + base FPKG? For example, will I be able to apply future update 2 on top of a merged Base+Update1file?

 

[Leeful]

I've always been against merging games and updates.
If you want to mod your games or use trainers etc it causes nothing but problems. Game mods and trainers require a certain version of the game and most of the time if you merge the pkgs it does not register as being the correct version number so things don't work as they should.

If you are concerned about hdd space, upgrade your internal hdd or use an external hdd.

Personally I only ever have a handful of games on my PS4 at any one time. This makes the ps4 run a lot better and if I get a kernel panic it doesnt take as long to scan the drive.
I keep all the PS4 pkgs that I have on a couple of USB drives and only install them if I want to play them.

 

[KiiWii]

As @Leeful said: Don’t merge! Best advice is to upgrade your storage space.

You can still update on top of a merged pkg as long as you maintain versioning in SFO etc, but it’s just messier to archive.

You could strip languages to save more space, or dummy out movies and files you don’t care about, but merging really won’t save much.

 

[CyanideDN]

Thanks for the advice. Somehow I was under the impression that merging would significantly reduce the size because the updated files can overwrite the base files. But looks like it won't save as much space?

For my Switch, I've maintained my library with base and update files separately (unmerged) so I'll probably do the same for the PS4.