It is common that with so many games to play on Xbox, the hard drives that come by default are not large enough to be able to install all the games that are going to be played. This has been exacerbated thanks to Xbox Game Pass, with a huge catalog of games to install and continue to saturate the hard drive. And for this reason, it is necessary to attend to the way of expanding storage, and we offer you the definitive guide to install external hard drives on Xbox. Although if you still do not know which hard drive to choose or what aspects you should take into account for your choice, you can consult our guide to choosing a hard drive for Xbox and PC.
The arrival of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S It has changed the way of thinking about storage on Xbox consoles a bit. Although, until now, the consoles of the Xbox One family allowed storage equally on the internal and external hard drive via USB, in the case of the new consoles it is necessary to know if the game offers specific improvements to install it on the internal hard drive, or external.
External hard drives on Xbox: Everything you need to know:
How to connect external hard drives on Xbox Series X | S?
We are not going to discover anything new, although we can explain what you have to take into account when connecting a new external storage unit on your Xbox consoles. Basically, if you want to play video games not optimized for the new generation, you must connect a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 disk. The External hard drives on Xbox must be in NTFS or FAT format so that the console recognizes them and assigns them the new game format.
About the difference between connecting an SSD and an HDD via USB, we are talking about better overall results for the SSD, although with obvious limitations. Seagate has a line of memory expansion cards (so far 1TB but new 512 and 2TB cards have already been confirmed) that operate at the same speed as the internal disk. An SSD can give us faster load times than an HDD, but it is limited by the USB 3.1 gen1 port that the console has. Expand this information in our coverage.
What games need external hard drives?
While on Xbox One consoles, there is no discrimination between the games that can, and those that cannot, on Xbox Series X | S there are important limitations. The first is that if it is an Xbox One game with improvements, these would be lost. And if it is an exclusive game of the new generation, it will be impossible to play it from an external disk. For this reason, the best option for expanding your storage is Seagate expansion cards. But also the most expensive.
This is why, since there is a backward compatible games catalog Gigantic, external hard drives on Xbox are meant to be warehouses of games for the three generations leading up to the Xbox Series X | S. What continues to leave us the problem for example in the Xbox Series S that has a significantly smaller internal disk.
How to expand the storage of your Xbox Series console in a more economical way
With all this, it may be interesting to evaluate different offers available to improve the performance of the loads, for which it may be interesting to opt for a external SSD to take full advantage of USB 3.1 transfer capacity, as we told you in an article related to these possibilities. But it is a good time to consider the different options that are available right now to expand the storage capacity.
Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card | S
Last updated on 2021-11-06. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
The Xbox Velocity Architecture It is something that totally changed the rules of the game. To date, it was as simple as opting for a large catalog of hard drives on Xbox, where you could assess the performance between mechanical HDDs and SSDs. Now NMVe have allowed the concept of gaming to be revolutionized, but the Xbox Series X | S USB limitation does not allow us to take advantage of any of these fully, offering little real difference to SSDs and HDDs that can be fully exploited.
However, the number of backward compatible games it can be a good reason to consider purchasing an external hard drive for them. And it is that the Xbox ecosystem has as a great asset to be able to enjoy up to 4 generations on the same console without losing the capabilities of the internal hard drive for new games that use the capabilities of the new generation of Xbox Series X | S.
What is an SSD: How you can revolutionize the game on Xbox Series X | S
Best external hard drives for Xbox
While the best option is a Seagate memory expansion card, the option of an external drive is by no means negligible. In fact, they work very well together. The external disk, be it SSD or HDD, will be the best place to have your backward compatible games that are not optimized for the new generation. While the Seagate memory expansion card will do for all other games. In this way, you will have a large number of options at your immediate disposal.
Here we leave you a list of the best external hard drives for Xbox:
Mechanical Hard Drives
Last updated on 2020-11-27. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2021-11-13. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2021-10-11. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2021-08-23. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
SSD Hard Drives
Last updated on 2020-11-27. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2020-11-27. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2020-11-27. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
Last updated on 2020-11-27. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.
The best-selling external hard drives on Xbox on Amazon
Last updated on 2021-11-13. Prices and availability may differ from those published. SomosXbox could receive a commission for your purchases. More information.