xbox_one_ssd

Should you upgrade Xbox One with an SSD? Loading times are getting out of hand - can solid-state storage reduce waits on Microsoft's console? By Thomas Morgan Published 06/03/2016. Having seen the worthwhile results of SSD and hybrid drive upgrades on PlayStation 4, it's now Xbox One's turn in the test seat. With its stock 5,400rpm drive turning in loading times of well over a minute in certain titles - such as Just Cause 3 and Grand Theft Auto 5 - Microsoft's machine thankfully has plenty of options to speed up the downtime. One of its trump cards is the ability to connect to any external drive via USB 3.0, making the upgrade path much more fluid than it is on PS4. That is, provided you have one specific tool for the job. Now, it's possible to buy an external SSD and be done with it - but there's a more affordable path to the same results. For all our tests below, we rely on a simple USB enclosure device that costs in the region of Ј10-15, allowing us to connect any spare 2.5 inch laptop drive you like to the console. As long as it has a SATA interface, you can even slot in SSD or hybrid drives, and this combo comes in at a significantly lower price. Once connected, there's no lengthy 'backup and restore' process on Xbox One either; you simply copy a game over from the internal to the attached drive, and reap the rewards in faster read speeds. As a test process, this has made putting this article together much easier than on PS4, but the key hardware is otherwise the same. As before, we're pitting the Xbox One stock drive against a 1TB Seagate hybrid SSHD that relies on a small cache of fast NAND memory to boost access speeds, coming in at around Ј70. As an upgrade option it doubles the storage space over the console's standard 500GB drive, but also vies for read and write speeds with to a pricey SSD. To show the real deal at work though, we also have a full-fledged OCZ Trion 100 drive that falls around the Ј100 mark for its 480GB model. Xbox One benefits hugely from an SSD or hybrid drive upgrade in open world titles like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Just Cause 3. Tom and Dave run through the test results to highlight the pros and cons for each game. Order the OCZ Trion 100 480GB[?] or the Seagate 1TB Hybrid SSHD[?] from Amazon with free shipping. So let's get to the tests, and where better to start than Dead Rising 3 - an Xbox One exclusive that built up some notoriety for its long loading screens at launch. With all patches applied to date, the initial load of 29 seconds on a stock drive isn't the most radical of waits these days - and a possible sign of optimisation since. However, the frequency of loading screens is more the issue here when selecting chapters, and moving to an SSD only shaves eight seconds off its prologue (while a hybrid saves five seconds). In other words, the upgrade isn't substantial enough for Dead Rising 3 fans to be swayed here. The cumulative gains might stack up for each loading screen by the game's end, but it's one of the smallest gains overall compared to the rest of our tests. Meanwhile, titles like Grand Theft Auto 5 fall on the opposite end of the spectrum - and this brings out the biggest improvement of any game we've seen in moving to an SSD or hybrid on console. Indeed, there may only be one initial loading screen to it, but the savings are big in Rockstar's blockbuster title. Both solid state and hybrid drives come in at circa 25 seconds for this first load screen - in our case, spawning at O'Neil Way on each to keep the test fair. This shaves over a minute off the Xbox One stock drive's one minute and 28 second wait, and makes Grand Theft Auto 5 one of the main benefactors of an upgrade. Of course, the RAGE engine simply streams assets as we move around the world from here, but it's a clear saving nevertheless. Xbox One game performance generally sees little or no improvement by using an SSD, outside of improved loading times. The exception to the rule is Fallout 4, which still has a horrible stutter bug on the Microsoft console, solved by copying the game to an external SSD. The story so far is that a hybrid does a close enough job for a lower price - but that's not true in all cases. Notably, The Witcher 3 favours a shift to a full SSD solution, where the game's massive 40GB install can be read with minimal seek times. Novigrad City is our first test here, and for good reason: such a bustling hub provokes one the of the longest waits from the main menu. The initial load comes in at one minute and 39 seconds on Xbox One's stock drive, but the SSD cuts this down to 56 seconds, while our hybrid tails behind at 1 minute 7 seconds. The crucial point here is that the Seagate hybrid drive is some seconds off the SSD result. It's a similar story for Just Cause 3, an open-world title that continues to frustrate on Microsoft's stock drive, with initial loading times nearing two minutes . The OCZ solid state drive is a clear winner of the trio, of course, cutting that down to 57 per cent of the wait, at just over a minute when first loading into Baia. But the hybrid drive comes surprisingly close in practice, with respawn times here only three seconds off the SSD's recorded time. Just Cause 3's initial load times remain woeful regardless of your chosen option, but it's still a massive cut - and the stock drive's respawn times are chopped down by a third on SSD and hybrid. This is what we signed up for, and even other open-world projects like Fallout 4 show similar gains. In particular, NPC hubs like Concord town and Diamond city get the biggest mark-up in speed, and the high volumes of data in each spot seemingly gives these faster drives an opportunity to show off faster read speeds. Here, it's a direct 50 per cent halving on the SSD when compared to stock (note: each is loaded from the main menu), while the hybrid trails behind only by 2-5 seconds in these areas. For CD Projekt Red's superb action-RPG, The Witcher 3, the upgrade makes a more tangible difference than in most games. The choice to segregate its world into different regions forces the use of fast travelling, cuing up more loading screens along the road than your typical open-field design. Shifting from Novigrad City to Woesong Bridge, for example, incurs a 47 second wait that drops to just 26 seconds on SSD, while the hybrid falls directly between the two. It's a solid saving either way, but the price of each drive starts to scale with the speed benefits in this case. The one snag is that dying and respawning in The Witcher 3 remains a patience-testing experience on an upgraded drive. Even with all the data presumably loaded in, both hybrid and SSD take around 50 seconds to respawn into Crookback Bog - a similar timeframe as this area's initial load. This proved an issue on PS4 as well, and it's a shame no common information is reused on reloading the last save nearby. Project Cars mixes up the formula a bit, relying on a single load per race. Times vary based on the track and number of cars set up beforehand, and in a scenario of 44 AI racers on Le Mans 24 Hours, we hit 50 seconds on the stock drive. On SSD, however, we cut an impressive 14 seconds from that time, which again puts Project Cars among the better cases in terms of the overall percentage we're clawing back. Rounding out the tests is Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, where regular trips between missions and the command centre can tally up the loading times. Judging by the three missions tested, a hybrid gets a near match for SSD results on this game too - making which to go for a moot point. At under 50 per cent of the wait on stock, it turns out upgrading to either drive is well worth it, and it chops a considerable chunk off that 25-35 second loading screen. Should you upgrade your Xbox One with an SSD? The Digital Foundry verdict. Overall, there are three lessons learned from our Xbox One tests. The first is obvious; an SSD is a premium, costly solution that gets the job done better than any alternative - especially for data-heavy titles like The Witcher 3. However, the hybrid drive makes a very comparable return on the likes of Dead Rising 3 and Project Cars, and at a lower price point that still offers twice the capacity. For a catch-all improvement across all games, the SSD is the fast track to the best results, but if space on Xbox One's stock drive is a more pressing issue, then a hybrid upgrade may kill two birds with one stone. The second point is directed at the elephant in the room. Unfortunately, while these drives are much faster than Xbox One's stock solution, the full potential of both the SSD and hybrid isn't being tapped into at all. On PC, this OCZ SSD can hit peak read rates of up to 550Mbps via a direct SATA 3 connection - but Xbox One's peak transfer rate is capped significantly. Even with this bottleneck though, the improvement is clear, and benefits come mainly through the minimal seek times with solid-state tech. Last but not least, it's interesting to compare the upgrade experience with that on PS4. Simply put, it's a far easier process on Xbox One, where rather than replacing the console's internal HDD (where PS4 demands that you back up all your data in advance), this is a simple plug-and-play route. It does involve a USB enclosure, but it means we can still use the machine's existing stock drive in combination with the external - doubling up the space, and letting us choose which drive to use per game. As for the net gains in loading speeds, Xbox One benefits more than PS4 in its move to an SSD - for the simple fact its stock drive has proven slower on average than Sony's chosen unit. To explain this, Xbox One takes 19 minutes in total to run through all the above tests on its stock drive in on go. Meanwhile, PS4 achieves the same feat in 15 minutes across all the very same games. In upgrading to an SSD on each though, this total figure becomes almost identical at ten minutes for both PS4 and Xbox One. Overall, it makes the question of whether to upgrade your Xbox One drive much easier to answer. The benefits are greater on Microsoft's machine, and it's also much easier to implement. Given the sheer size of game installs so far this generation as well, where the stock 500GB limit doesn't cut it for convenience, it's quickly becoming a necessity to have that second pool of space at the ready. The only question remains: how fast do you want it? Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here. How to Make Your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One Faster (By Adding an SSD) Sony and Microsoft chose not to ship the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles with solid-state drives. They went with slower mechanical drives to keep costs down, but you can speed up load times for your console games by adding a solid-state drive to your PS4 or Xbox One. Modern console games are generally installed to and loaded from the hard drive, not just from discs. Using a faster solid-state drive will decrease load times in games. This is the one upgrade you can perform on a game console. You could also use this trick to add a larger mechanical hard drive and get more storage than the 500 GB drive that came with your console, if you prefer. PlayStation 4. PlayStation 4 consoles don’t support external hard drives, so you can’t just plug an external SSD into your console. However, the PlayStation 4 allows you to access to a drive bay, where you can remove the internal drive and then replace it. You could take out the mechanical hard drive that came with your PS4, and install a faster solid-state drive — or an even larger mechanical hard drive, if you prefer. Sony provides official instructions for replacing your PS4’s hard drive. Your new drive must be a 2.5-inch internal drive, 9.5mm or slimmer in size, and use the SATA specification. As long as you choose a drive that matches those specifications, it should work just fine in your PS4. Do some research and buy a solid internal SSD — it’d be the same kind of SSD you’d purchase if you were upgrading a computer with an SSD. You can only have one hard drive installed at a time in your PS4, so you might want to purchase a fairly large SSD. Sony’s guide will walk you through backing up the data currently on your console to a removable drive, accessing the PlayStation 4’s hard drive bay, installing the drive, and then reinstalling the PS4 system software on your new drive and restoring the backup. Microsoft’s Xbox One doesn’t allow you to open it and replace its internal drive. However, the Xbox One does support external hard drives you can connect over USB. Buy a speedy external SSD that uses the USB 3.0 specification, plug it into your Xbox One, and you can install games on that drive. Games will load faster from a sufficiently fast external drive than they would from the internal mechanical drive. You’ll need a drive that supports USB 3.0 and is at least 256 GB in size, or the Xbox One won’t allow you to install games to it. You should also seek out a solid-state drive that uses USB 3.0 for the fastest performance — you might want to look up benchmarks of external drives before you buy them. Cheap USB 3.0 external drives might actually be quite slow, despite being labelled with “USB 3.0”. The Xbox One offers three USB 3.0 ports, so you could have up to three external drives connected. Plug an external drive into your Xbox One and you’ll be prompted to format it and use it for games and apps. You can also access this option from Settings > All settings > System > Storage > Format for games & apps. You can move games between drives without reinstalling them. Highlight a game in My games & apps, press the Menu button, and select Manage game. You can then move it between your connected storage devices – for example, between an internal drive and an external drive. Microsoft’s website provides information on using an external drive with your Xbox One. Games on Nintendo’s Wii U typically aren’t installed to the internal storage, unless you download them digitally and don’t play them from discs. However, you can also connect external drives to your Wii U to increase the storage capacity and potentially speed up load times if the game is loading data from the drive. Nintendo’s website explains what you need to know about adding external drives to your Wii U. Chris Hoffman is a technology writer and all-around computer geek. He's as at home using the Linux terminal as he is digging into the Windows registry. Connect with him on Twitter. Did You Know. Unlike dogs, cats have no ability to detect sweet flavors (and thus find such dangerous but sweet-tasting things like chocolate and antifreeze solution easy to pass up). Get the HTG Newsletter. Join 100,000 other subscribers. Follow How-To Geek. More Articles You Might Like. Enter your email address to get our daily newsletter. Engadget. Microsoft's cloud business just keeps growing. Amazon's QR-like 'SmileCodes' are the key to discounts and Lockers. Microsoft adds support for iOS Files app, drag and drop to OneDrive. Latest in Gaming. Shigeru Miyamoto will co-produce a 'Mario' animated movie. Nintendo will bring 'Mario Kart Tour' to smartphones by March 2019. Nintendo Switch Online will launch in September. NVIDIA proves the cloud can replace a high-end gaming rig. Xbox One's 500GB HDD swapped for bigger, faster drives, and tested for performance. The Xbox One arrives with a 500GB HDD built-in, and in contrast to the PlayStation 4's easily-accessed storage, it's not meant to be accessed or replaced by the user, ever. While we'll probably leave ours in place to keep from voiding the warranty or risk a ban from Xbox Live, a few folks have already cracked open the console to see what else will fit. iFixit noted during its teardown that there's an off-the-shelf 2.5-inch Samsung HDD inside connected via SATA II inside, and swapping that out isn't much of an issue. Brian Williams has already tried out the system with two alternate drives: a 500GB Samsung EVO SSD, and a Seagate 1TB hybrid SSHD. As you can see in his video (embedded after the break) boot time from off to the dashboard only improved slightly, with the SSD loading in 46.1 seconds compared to 50.5 stock. A test with Call of Duty: Ghosts revealed similar results, with the SSD loading up in 27 seconds and the hybrid drive close behind in 27.7, compared to 33.5 seconds stock. We'll need tests with more games to be sure, but so far it's not showing the improvements seen after swapping the PS4's hard drive out for speedier options. The folks at Tested report doing so improved level load times in Killzone: Shadow Fall from 60 seconds to 39 seconds. So, if it's not a ton faster, why would you want to take the chance of prying Microsoft's box open? To get more space. Brian's drives were simply copies of the original transferred by Clonezilla, but an individual named Juvenal1 has already worked out how to get the system to actually recognize and make use of drives bigger than 500GB. By copying files from your original drive and using their Linux-compatible tool to repartition the new HDD, you can be up and running with more capacity after just a reboot or two. Of course, this carries significant risks and we don't recommend it for most, as Microsoft's Albert Penello has already revealed support for external drives is coming in a future update, along with the ability to do crazy things like see how much storage you actually have left. Still, if you just need to live on the edge (or store every game released so far and record hours of clean Upload Studio clips) the instructions can be found here. Update : If you're interested in performing the upgrade, Brian Williams has followed with a video walkthrough for the process of properly formatting a larger hard drive, even if you're not familiar with using Linux. SpaceX rocket survives an intentional water landing. It's more resilient than expected. eBay will soon replace PayPal as its main payment option. It'll allow the website to offer a more seamless payment experience. Shigeru Miyamoto will co-produce a 'Mario' animated movie. Illumination Entertainment is working on the animated feature. Nintendo will bring 'Mario Kart Tour' to smartphones by March 2019. Another familiar franchise is going mobile. Nintendo Switch Online will launch in September. Nintendo's answer to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has a launch window. Ben Dodson. Freelance iOS, Apple Watch, and Apple TV Developer. Using an SSD with the Xbox One. I love my Xbox One but the one big issue I have with it is loading times. This is mainly due to the spinning hard drive 1 inside and the huge amount of data it is expected to push for some of the bigger open world games like GTA V or The Witcher 3. In an effort to speed this up (and because the 500GB hard drive is almost full), I’ve upgraded my Xbox One with an external SSD 2 . The process is actually incredibly simple. You’ll need the following two things: An mSATA SSD that is at least 256GB in size. I went for a 256GB model from Transcend. A USB 3.0 enclosure for the SSD. You’ll want one that has UASP support like this one from ZTC. Do not get one from Sabrent 3 ! Once you have these, it’s a simple case of plugging the SSD into the enclosure and attaching the USB cable. This leaves you with an incredibly small device which can then be plugged into any of the 3 USB 3.0 ports on the Xbox One: As soon as you turn the Xbox One on, you’ll be alerted that a new media device has been attached and given the option to format it for games and give it a name. When you have done this, you’ll be able to copy games and apps by going to their individual storage settings and choosing the move option. I’ve only put 3 games on the SSD so far but they are all dramatically faster for loading and saving. I’ve put a few benchmarks below: This is by far my slowest game. Testing was from a cold startup (which automatically loads your previous save point) to the point at which the game was playable: SSD produces a 60% reduction in loading time. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The first test was from a cold start to the opening menu. SSD produces a 30% reduction in loading time (although that seemed to be as quick as it could go due to the logos and publisher videos at startup). The second test was from resuming a game from the main menu. SSD produces a 57% reduction in loading time. LEGO Jurassic World. For this test, I timed from the loading of the last save point on the main menu. It looks like LEGO Jurassic World’s loading sequence is limited to 37 seconds in order to show 3 pieces of dinosaur trivia at 12 seconds each. Playing through the game though, the time it takes to start a story and fast travel to new locations seems much faster. Overall, it seems that the SSD offers around a 55-60% reduction in speed unless there is something specifically limiting the load time (i.e. videos or placeholder content). I’m planning on just using the external drive for single player games at the moment as there isn’t much benefit in loading the Titanfall or Halo online textures any quicker when the limiting factor is the broadband connection along with everyone else. For me, the SSD option is definitely worth the cost for the big open world games that have a heavy loading time penalty when you die (looking at you GTA V) - it has also increased my overall storage space by 50% which is useful when some games are in the 100s of GB. Gross! One day I’ll look forward to telling my kids we used to store data on discs spinning at 7200rpm - it’ll be baffling to them.В ↩︎ As far as I’m aware, doing it internally would be slightly faster but would definitely invalidate any warranty!В ↩︎ The first enclosure I got was the EC-UKMS from Sabrent which was advertised as having UASP. It doesn’t and led to a 70% decrease in speed over the internal HDD with a load time of over 4 minutes for GTA V! This is the first product I’ve actually left a review for on Amazon as the title and images are blatent lies.В ↩︎ I perform all freelance work through my company Dodo Apps Ltd (07856552) registered at The Bristol Office, 2nd Floor, 5 High Street, Westbury on Trym, Bristol, England, BS9 3BY. Xbox One S. Более 1300 эксклюзивных игр, встроенный плеер 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™, потоковое 4K-видео Теперь это действительно серьезное предложение для фанатов. Xbox One S. Самое выгодное решение для игр и развлечений! Xbox One S поддерживает более 1300 игр: блокбастеры, популярные франшизы и эксклюзивные игры для Xbox One. Играйте с друзьями, пользуйтесь приложениями и наслаждайтесь встроенным плеером 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™ и потоковом 4K-видео. Потрясающая графика с технологией High Dynamic Range. Blu-ray™ и потоковое видео с разрешением Ultra HD. Первоклассный звук с технологиями Dolby Atmos и DTS:X. Xbox – это лучший выбора. для вашей семьи. Игровой консоли Xbox есть что предложить для всех возрастов и интересов, и она будет развиваться вместе с вашей семьей. Единственная консоль, на которой вы сможете насладиться лучшими играми прошлого, настоящего и будущего. Насладитесь более чем 1300 прекрасными играми от крупнейших блокбастеров и самых популярных франшиз до трех поколений самых любимых игр прошлого, с которыми теперь можно познакомиться или поиграть еще раз. В Minecraft вы будете строить из блоков и участвовать в приключениях. Sea of Thieves. Приключенческая игра с открытым миром, где вы можете исполнить свою мечту стать пиратом! Super Lucky’s Tale. «Super Lucky’s Tale» это прекрасный игровой платформер для всех возрастов. Star Wars™ Battlefront™ II. Окунитесь в мир бесконечного экшена Star Wars™. Преимущества расширенного динамического диапазона. Упивайся более насыщенными и яркими цветами в таких играх, как Gears of War 4 и Forza Horizon 3. Технология расширенного динамического диапазона повышает контраст между светлыми и темными участками изображения, представляя игры во всем их великолепии! Преимущества расширенного динамического диапазона. Упивайся более насыщенными и яркими цветами в таких играх, как Gears of War 4 и Forza Horizon 3. Технология расширенного динамического диапазона повышает контраст между светлыми и темными участками изображения, представляя игры во всем их великолепии! Xbox One предлагает много способов игры. Абонемент Xbox Game Pass дает мгновенный, неограниченный доступ более чем к 100 популярных и веселых игр, список которых постоянно пополняется. 1. Теперь, купив электронный выпуск игры с поддержкой Xbox Play Anywhere, ты можешь играть в нее как на Xbox One, так и на компьютере с Windows 10 без дополнительных затрат. 2. Благодаря обратной совместимости вы сможете насладиться легендарным игровыми франшизами начиная с момента их появления. 3. Mixer — это доступная на Xbox One интерактивная платформа для потоковых видеотрансляций, позволяющая смотреть игру любимых стримеров и играть вместе с ними. Поддержка всех игр и аксессуаров к Xbox One. Все уже имеющиеся у тебя аксессуары с Xbox One (или те, что у тебя на примете) совместимы с Xbox One S.* Лучший выбор для развлечений в формате 4K. Потоковое 4K-видео. Смотри потоковое видео с разрешением 4K Ultra HD в Netflix, Amazon и других сервисах. 4K-плеер Blu-ray. Смотрите фильмы с потрясающей детализацией на встроенном плеере 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray TM . Пространственный звук. Игры и фильмы оживают благодаря завораживающему звуку с технологиями Dolby Atmos и DTS:. X. 4. Разнообразие приложений. Используй любимые приложения, такие как YouTube, Spotify и многие другие. 5. Находите друзей и играйте вместе через Xbox Live. Находите друзей, встречайте противников и объединяйтесь в команды в самом лучшем глобальном мировом сообществе. 6. Комплекты Xbox One S по цене от 22,999 ₽. Новая Xbox One X. Самая мощная консоль на сегодняшний день! * За исключением подставки под Xbox One S, которая предназначена исключительно для этой консоли. Для использования Kinect с Xbox One S и Xbox One X требуется адаптер Xbox Kinect (приобретается отдельно). 1. Требуется месячный абонемент Game Pass, действует до отмены. Каталог игр со временем может изменяться. Подробности на сайте: www.xbox.com/game-pass. 2. Системные требования к компьютеру для игр на Windows 10 могут различаться. 3. Функция обратной совместимости Xbox One работает только с определенными играми Xbox 360, подробности на веб-сайте: www.xbox.com/backcompat. Для первоначального скачивания игры на консоль необходимы учетная запись Xbox Live и широкополосное подключение к Интернету. 4. Для использования технологии Dolby Atmos for Headphones требуется дополнительная покупка в Microsoft Store. 5. Для использования некоторых приложений могут потребоваться подписки, а также выполнение некоторых других условий, если этого требует поставщик приложения. Подробности на веб-сайте www.xbox.com/live. 6. Для многопользовательской игры в Интернете требуется подписка Xbox Live Gold (приобретается отдельно). Xbox_One_X. 21 пользователь находится здесь. МОДЕРАТОРЫ. x2040 Xbox One S lukehasawii о команде модераторов » Welcome to Reddit, the front page of the internet. and subscribe to one of thousands of communities. Want to add to the discussion? помощь правила сайта центр поддержки вики реддикет mod guidelines связаться с нами. приложенияи инструменты Reddit for iPhone Reddit for Android mobile website кнопки. Использование данного сайта означает, что вы принимаете пользовательского соглашения и Политика конфиденциальности. © 2018 reddit инкорпорейтед. Все права защищены. REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc. π Rendered by PID 75912 on app-11 at 2018-02-01 04:47:46.061945+00:00 running b5f602d country code: RU. Xbox One sees speed improvements with SSD, hybrid modifications. Xbox modder Brian Williams has installed two non-standard drives on an Xbox One, testing them to see whether they make for faster boot and game load times than the standard drive. The exercise demonstrates where the gaming industry is at in terms of drive configurations. The take-home point is that hybrid drives — a traditional hard disk paired with a flash memory or SSD (solid-state drive) — is a happy medium between speed and cost-effectiveness. He booted the Xbox five times with each drive. The standard hard drive that comes with the Xbox — a Samsung 500GB HD — booted the system in 50.5 seconds. A Seagate 1TB SSHD hybrid drive booted the system in 48.0 seconds. The Samsung 500GB EVO SSD came out on top at 46.1 seconds, for almost a 5-second improvement over the OEM drive. The modder points out that the Samsung SSD costs $330 USD, and that the Seagate hybrid drive is $120 USD. Those are pricey mods for a few seconds’ worth of boot time. Therefore more testing was required to find out whether such an investment would be worth making. So he loaded the first level of Call of Duty: Ghosts using each of the three systems. On the standard drive, the level loaded in 33.5 seconds. The two third-party drives loaded the level in 27.0 seconds (Samsung SSD) and 27.7 seconds (Seagate hybrid). Williams points out that modifying the Xbox One voids the system warranty. Would you consider modding your Xbox One for faster boot and load times? And would you like to see the gaming industry continue to move towards hybrid or even pure flash-based drives — even if it jacked up the prices of consoles? How to Upgrade the Xbox One Hard Drive. This page details how to use an external hard drive with an Xbox One and Xbox One S. While users do not have the ability to upgrade the internal storage of their XB1 consoles, the device is compatible with a myriad of external hard drives. They can be used for unused file storage, though when properly formatted, games can be played directly from the external drive. In some cases, this can help cut down on loading times as the USB 3.0 connection is able to transmit data at a faster rate than the internal HD. Selecting a Storage Upgrade. In order to successfully upgrade the storage capacity of the Xbox One, there are several requirements that need to be met: USB 3.0 connection 256GB minimum storage space. 5400RPM drive speed. Installing the External Storage Unit. . Once an acceptable hard drive has been selected, the installation / setup process is fairly simple. Power on the Xbox One and plug the external storage device into one of the three USB 3.0 ports located on the console. Once the drive is connected, a notification should appear on the Xbox screen. Press the Menu button to proceed to the setup screen, or select it manually by navigating to: Settings > System > Manage Storage. Step Three. Select the external drive and scroll down to the Format for Games & Apps option and press A . After the storage device is successfully formatted, power off and restart the Xbox One. This is not a required step, but it is recommended. Once the XB1 restarts, the total sum of available space (between both the internal and external drives) should be displayed on the Games and Apps screen. You can now install games, apps and all of your other content to either the internal or external storage devices on your Xbox One. How to Appear Offline on Xbox One Previous. How to Update Your Xbox One Controller. © 1996-2018 Ziff Davis, LLC. We have updated our PRIVACY POLICY and encourage you to read it by clicking here. IGN uses cookies and other tracking technologies to customize online advertisements, and for other purposes. IGN supports the Digital Advertising Alliance principles. Learn More. GamesRadar+ The best Xbox One external hard drives. Beef up your gaming box's storage. Once again your Xbox One hard drive is full of games again and another poor title is up for the chop. Surely you just cleared this? If deleting games is now a weekly or monthly occurrence, you need a new Xbox One hard drive. Even a 1TB drive now seems to just be a little too small for all the games you want to store in there at once. The good news is that upgrading is ridiculously easy and you don't even have to touch a screwdriver to give yourself stacks of space on your Xbox One or Xbox One X. External hard drives are your new best friend and there's a stack of excellent options to choose from. But which is the best Xbox One hard drive? Time for an Xbox One S? The Xbox One's USB 3.0 ports mean you can plug in some pretty fast-moving drives, and you can always buy an enclosure and fill it with a loose drive if you don't wan't to have to use just the traditional portable USB. TL:DR? If you're looking for more space, you've come to the right place. Let's check out the best Xbox One external hard drives. Oh, and if you're looking for more games to fill up your new purchase, check out our best Xbox One games. 1. Toshiba 1TB Canvio Basics. A no-brainer to double your original Xbox One HDD. This slimline external drive is both a bit of a bargain and big enough to either double or triple your Xbox One’s storage capacity, depending on your console’s starting point. It will sit unobtrusively next to your Xbox One and deliver a full 1TB of extra game storage across the speedy USB 3.0 interface for a great price. 2. Western Digital 2TB My Passport Ultra. Heaps of storage at a great price. Western Digital is probably the biggest name in traditional spinning platter hard drive storage, and its My Passport Ultra is a massive external drive in capacity only. Despite the fact you can get up to 3TB of storage the device itself is pleasingly diminutive and comes in a range of shades. Pro-tip: berry is the cheapest option. The 2TB drive though is probably the best-value version for Xbox One gamers. 3. Seagate 2TB/4TB Xbox One Game Drive. Go big (and official) Coming in two sizes and a stylish white Xbox One Special Edition, Seagate's Game Drive makes a slick addition to your under TV set up. Once again, all you have to do it plug in and play and the fact that there's a 4TB version available means you'll just be downloading games because you can, instead of asking yourself if you'll ever play them. Go on, be decadent. 4. Seagate Expansion 5TB. For when you never want to run out of space. If you never want to worry about storage ever again, look no further than Seagate's 5TB affair. With USB 3.0 it's up to speed in terms of transfer rates and did we mention that it's 5TB? It's not going to win any awards in terms of style (it's a big box that weighs 948g) and you'll need to plug it in but it definitely gets the job done in terms of storage. You're going to end up just downloading Games with Gold because you can. 5. Seagate 1TB SSHD. A speedy budget DIY option if you're happy to buy a caddy. There are a couple of options if you’re going for a do-it-yourself drive - this Seagate SSHD is a hybrid of traditional spinning platters and solid state storage giving you a large amount of space for a good price with a bit of a speed boost thanks to a small cache of SSD-like storage. You will though need either a USB 3.0 caddy to house it, if you want a neat finish, or a simple USB 3.0 to SATA adapter if you don’t mind the bare hardware aesthetic. 6. Samsung 500GB 850 EVO. The best DIY SSD solution. The other option is to go for performance and use an SSD for your external storage. Samsung is the current king of the SSD world and its 850 EVO drive is a great example of the company’s ability to balance performance and price. You are sacrificing capacity for speed - though you can spend more on 1TB or 2TB options - but if game load times are currently getting you down an SSD will help. Remember you'll also need a USB 3.0 caddy for this one too. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. Recommended. 8 things to watch out for this week. Who are the GamesRadar+ team? Shadow of the Colossus review: "Still feels as thought provoking and artful as it did all those years ago on PS2" Monster Hunter World review: "An incredible achievement" UFC 3 review: "Half-brilliant, half going-through-the-motions" Dragon Ball FighterZ review: "Flashy and a bit dumb. but god is it fun to watch" The Inpatient review: "It's all utterly brilliant; terrifyingly so" Journey's End review: "A harrowing, powerful WW1 drama well worth enduring" Phantom Thread review: "Anderson crafts another classic of obsession and strange love" Early Man review: "A primitive concept generates unsophisticated laughs" Last Flag Flying review: "A salty road trip tinged with sadness" Downsizing review: "Alexander Payne re-confirms his position as one of US cinema's premier filmmakers" Star Trek Discovery S1.13 review: "It's incredible how much is packed into this one episode" Star Trek Discovery S1.12 review: "Proves that the series is even cleverer than we originally thought" Star Trek Discovery S1.11 review: "Swaps action for character revelations, but is no less thrilling" Star Trek Discovery S1.10 review: "So shocking and emotional that you'll need a second watch" The Walking Dead S8.08 review: "Is this really the best The Walking Dead has to give?" Gaming deals, prizes and latest news. Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more! No spam, we promise. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details without your permission. GamesRadar+ is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. © Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury , Bath BA1 1UA . All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. The Xbox One hard drive upgrade guide. Digital Foundry on the best value and performance storage upgrades. The cheapest 2TB hard drive we could find takes on a number of performance storage options. What should you buy? By David Bierton Published 10/08/2014. In an era where a single game occupies up to 50GB of storage space, the 500GB hard drives found in the new wave of games consoles just aren't going to cut it. We've already looked at potential PlayStation 4 upgrades, but until recently, owners of the Xbox One were left with few options - other than to delete content and re-download it. Thankfully, recent OS updates now finally allow for Xbox One users to connect an external storage device to the console via the system's USB ports, used in concert with the unit's internal drive. External storage must be 250GB or larger and formatted by the console before it can be used. Once done the new drive is seamlessly integrated into the Xbox One's dashboard and content system. It is possible to install games and apps directly onto the external drive or copy them over from the console internal HDD. The OS also makes it possible to filter out content stored on both internal and external storage devices or simply group them all together seamlessly. The idea here is that games and apps can be played back from internal and external drives without impacting on the core Xbox One experience, and after many hours of testing we encountered no obvious issues, such as system crashes or game-related errors.

 Better still the Xbox One's use of high-speed USB 3.0 ports also opens up the possibility of a genuine hard drive upgrade that could offer up benefits beyond just adding more storage space - faster loading times and texture streaming are two key areas that we've seen improvements in the past when using fast drives. The USB 3.0 spec features a maximum bandwidth around 300MB/s - more than double that of what traditional 5400rpm HDDs can achieve - and should allow for than enough throughput to make a difference in the day to operation of the console when gaming. There are a multitude of drive options out there - the 2.5-inch "passport" drives are the best value option for the Xbox One, and in the UK at least we've recently seen a collapse in the price of 2TB USB 3.0 drives. We snaffled a Toshiba Stor.e Basics model from Amazon for just Ј69.99 - excellent value. But theoretically, can other forms of external storage offer up actual in-game performance advantages? We wanted to see whether standardising a test environment with a single USB enclosure but multiple drives could result in better gameplay - and we wanted to compare it to our 2TB bargain plus the standard stock drive. The idea here is simple: are there any worthwhile benefits to using an SSD or another type of fast storage medium over choosing a big mechanical HDD? And if so, is the difference large enough to justify the premium prices per gig these more exotic options cost? There's a multitude of different drive options on offer that should be compatible with Xbox One. Our strategy? To choose the cheapest 2TB option, and stack up its performance credentials with the different forms of faster drive available - a 7200rpm 1TB drive, a hybrid HDD/SSD and full-blown solid state drive. Order the 2TB Toshiba Stor.e Basics with free shipping from Amazon UK. Up for testing in the exotic category, we have the Hitachi Z7K1000 - a popular 7200rpm 1TB drive that combines fast rotational speed with a decent price point (Ј49/$70). This is followed by the 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD. At around Ј150/$220 it's certainly not cheap, but here we get the benefits of flash storage in the form of much faster throughput and instant access to every single part of the drive. And lastly we have the Seagate 1TB hybrid SSD/HDD (Ј69/$95), equipped with a decent 5400rpm drive backed up by 8GB of flash storage. This drive caches commonly used areas of the disk to flash memory for faster access, so should have SSD-like benefits in some scenarios. We start by testing the performance of each drive on PC using CrystalDiskMark and HDTune to give us the raw metrics of what the units are capable of. Unfortunately, it's not possible for us to test out the stock Xbox One hard drive in this manner as doing so would require us to partially dismantle the unit and wipe the drive (thus nerfing the machine completely as the OS is present there) but in theory it should compare favourably to most decent 5400rpm HDDs out there. To give some indication of how the drives will perform on Xbox One, we use the same USB caddy we'll be using for our testing as opposed to connecting it up directly to our PC via the native SATA connection. This will undoubtedly limit performance of the SSD in particular (brutally so, as it happens), but it gives a more accurate view of the differences between the drives as the Xbox One would see them. The benchmark tests show a clear advantage to using an SSD. Read/write speeds are significantly beyond mechanical hard drives and access times (basically, the time it takes the drive to move from one file to the next) sit in the 0.1ms range - that means an SSD has instant access to every piece of data on the drive. The 7200rpm HDD puts in a decent performance with pretty quick read/write speeds although seek times are limited by the mechanical nature of the drive, and remain pretty high. The hybrid SSHD loses out to the other drives in terms of read/write speeds (the 5400rpm mechanical portion of the unit appears to be the culprit here) but makes up for this in a reduction in seek times compared to the 7200rpm HDD. Our initial run of tests yielded 20ms access times, but after multiple repetitions this came down to 6.3ms, showing that the 'learning' software is actually working correctly with the most commonly accessed data being stored on the bank of flash memory. This should mean that frequently access data in games - such as texture streaming - could be visibly faster on the hybrid SSHD compared to standard hard drives. Order our comparison hard drive drives with free shipping: So far so good. There's a noticeable difference in speed across various benchmark tests between each of the drives, but how do these results affect day-to-day performance when they are hooked up to the Xbox One via a USB connection? Assuming that the bandwidth hasn't been capped in any way, we should have more than enough throughput to take advantage of the faster hard drives and solid state storage, and thus hopefully leading to improvements in a number of areas where hard disk access is the limiting factor in terms of performance. But is this really the case, and if so just how much of a benefit to we get from using faster external storage mediums compared to the stock 5400rpm Xbox One HDD? And how does the default upgrade - a 2TB 5400rpm drive - compare? Since the most common reason for purchasing an external storage device is to free up or gain extra space after the internal drive is nearly filled to capacity, let's first take a look at how long it takes game data to be transferred across from the console's internal HDD to an external drive. Even with the Xbox One's speedy USB ports it still takes a good 20 minutes to copy over some of today's big triple-A releases between drives owing to their huge 40-50GB files sizes, although this is still preferable - and much quicker - than re-downloading them again. With initial reads and seek times limited by the internal 5400rpm HDD we're not expecting miracles here, and it's unsurprising that transferring data from the console to a faster external storage unit yields only a mild improvement in performance: using an hybrid SSHD or 7200rpm HDD cuts down waiting times by around a minute, while the SSD regularly shaves off two minutes when copying over several gigabytes of data. Since it can take almost half an hour to transfer over 40GB over to the external drive, the increase in speed is not exactly a big deal and has little benefit in the grand scheme of things. The time it takes to transfer files from the Xbox One's internal hard drive to an external storage medium is limited by the stock 5400rpm HDD. As such the use of an SSD or faster hard drive only yields a few very mild improvements in this area, bearing in mind we're dealing with multi-gig transfers. The same also holds true when looking at the time taken for games to install onto the various drives from physical media. Any improvement is limited by the speed of the console's Blu-ray drive and as such we saw little in the way of tangible improvements in how quickly it took to copy over data from physical media onto the stock HDD versus a faster 7200rpm hard drive or SSD. Data needs to be read from the optical drive and written to the hard drive, and here we can only improve the second part of this process. Full installs take up to 45 minutes to complete with titles that almost fill a dual-layered Blu-ray disk to capacity, and at best we saw just a few seconds shaved off at best when using an SSD - hardly a worthwhile boost in speed at all. Again, the 2TB "passport" drive clearly offers the best value. It might not be quite so fast, but this is a one-off operation and the cost per GB overrules any fleeting performance advantage. A look at loading times spread across a handful of titles on the Xbox One is a bit more promising, and shows that the use of faster external drives does indeed cut down the amount of time spent waiting for game data to load into RAM, thus getting us into the action a little quicker. The results vary from game to game, but with Call of Duty: Ghosts and Thief we see around five seconds shaved off loading times when using an SSD, while the 7200rpm HDD and hybrid SSHD comes in at anything between 2-4 seconds faster than the Xbox One's internal hard drive. Impressively, boot times are reduced down to a few seconds in Call Of Duty: Ghosts when using an SSD, although we don't see the same feat replicated across other titles. Differences in load times between drives are pretty small for the likes of Need for Speed Rivals and Sniper Elite 3, where we see only a few seconds shaved off when running the game on the external drives compared to the stock internal HDD, while in Trials Fusion the choice of drive has little impact at all in this area - loading times are generally short and snappy so there's minimal waiting before getting down to business. Overall, while we see some improvements across a few games with the SSD, the use of a fast storage medium doesn't appear to speed things up as much as we expected: going by the huge difference in benchmark results between the three drives we imagined that the impact on loading times would be a little more pronounced on titles where we saw a fairly large difference on the PS4, rather than the mild uptick in speed we actually get. That said, some of the titles we tested on both formats loaded more quickly on the Xbox One by default. Once again, we'd say that the Ј69.99 2TB 5400rpm drive clearly offers the best value while at the same time losing little in terms of performance. A look at how loading times in various titles compared across the four drives used in our tests. The use of an SSD clearly benefits boot times in Call of Duty Ghosts, although elsewhere waiting times are reduced by a only a few seconds at best. On the whole it's apparent that the use of a faster external drive only has limited benefits where loading, transferring data and installing games are concerned and if you're considering a hard drive upgrade for your Xbox One, a 2TB 5400rpm drive looks irresistible. However, maybe our performance drives can restore some honour in areas such as background streaming, where data is usually pulled directly off the hard drive before being loaded into RAM in order to reduce load times. Trials Fusion is one key title that does this: textures are transferred into memory from the console's hard drive in small chunks. The process is known as virtual texturing, and this allows for a plentiful amount of unique artwork to be displayed on screen - but the downside is that transitions between different quality assets are often visible during gameplay. Texture pop-in in general is less noticeable on the Xbox One version of Trials Fusion compared to the PS4 game, with lower quality assets staying on screen for shorter periods, although there are still times where blurry textures are left on screen for a few seconds - particularly when re-starting a track and during the closing cut-scenes. In these areas the use of an SSD clearly makes a tangible difference, dramatically lowering the amount of low-resolution artwork up we see. The hybrid SSHD isn't too far behind in a few scenes, basically straddling the line between the regular hard drives and the SSD. The Toshiba 2TB passport drive offers curious results here - sometimes streaming is slower than the stock drive, sometimes it's faster and often it's the same. Out of all the drives, it's clearly the slowest here. However, our video below concentrates on specific moments where the performance drives have an advantage. In truth, during gameplay we see very little difference in terms of texture streaming between the drives and quite often there are only a few instances where the results show a mild improvement over the 7200rpm and stock drives. As streaming in Trials Fusion is noticeably better on Xbox One than PS4, there's simply less room to deliver a tangible upgrade in the first place. Meanwhile, most of the remaining pop-in seems to be down to LOD (level of detail) settings rather than hard drive performance. In this video we take a look at how all four drives compare in the area of texture streaming. Trials Fusion and a few cut-scenes taken from Sniper Elite 3 are used as testing material, both of which are limited by hard drive bandwidth in terms of delivering higher quality artwork on screen quickly. An SSD makes a real difference here, but games that do benefit from a performance drive are few and far between. Sniper Elite 3 is another game where there are some jarring transitions between layers of asset quality. These are largely limited to the opening or closing sequences of each mission rather than being visible during gameplay, showing that LOD streaming is still occasionally a problem when you have assets that aren't all loaded into RAM in time. Here the use of a faster hard drive makes a slight difference: the SSD and to a lesser extent the hybrid SSHD resolve higher resolution textures more quickly than the stock and 7200rpm HDDs. The 2TB Toshiba drive falls somewhere in between the stock unit and the 7200rpm upgrade. In the case of the regular drives higher quality artwork fails to load in one of the cut-scenes, while finer details are clearly visible when running the game with an SSD equipped. From our experiences though, these small - but still noticeable - increases in texture streaming are limited to the occasional title and don't represent the experience of using a faster hard drive or SSD across the board. Beyond Trials Fusion and Sniper Elite 3 we noticed no changes to texture streaming in other games we tested - including Wolfenstein: The New Order - with transitions between low and high quality artwork occurring at the same time across all four drives. In most cases it appears that streaming speed is dictated by LOD parameters rather than hard drive read/writes or seek times, and as such it's not possible to improve upon performance in this area. While having higher quality artwork resolving on-screen more quickly certainly helps improve the presentation on the occasional game this alone isn't enough to justify the premium price point commanded by solid state and hybrid storage drives, although a subtle boost in performance (even just in the form of more consistent frame-time) would make the expense far for justifiable. But as we saw when carrying out similar tests across multiple drives on PS4, we found no additional performance benefits when using a faster hard drive or SSD. Frame-rates remained unchanged on all the games we tested, with frame-pacing issues appearing at similar points during gameplay when under load. We tested a bunch of titles that stutter while loading assets and found that none of our test drives made any difference whatsoever. Here's Thief running on the internal drive and via our 512GB Crucial SSD. Gameplay is identical. Xbox One external storage - the Digital Foundry verdict. With more titles weighing in between 40-50GB the ability to finally plug in an external storage unit is a welcome addition, and the way Microsoft has integrated this into the Xbox One OS is well thought out, with content seamlessly accessible across all drives without undue hassle once files have been transferred or re-downloaded. Clearly the use of external storage devices is designed to work as an extension to the core Xbox One library, and in that respect we encountered no unexpected functionality issues after repeatedly transferring our content between drives. It's also possible to store games across multiple drives too, simply plugging them back in when required - in effect you can back-up titles to external storage and plug them in as needed. Microsoft's external storage solution is admittedly a bit more untidy than simply installing a new hard drive into the console, but on the plus side you don't need to re-download all of your games again - a bonus in the age of the 50GB blockbuster. There's also the fact that each and every upgrade option we tried offers generally better performance than the stock drive - even our cheap and cheerful 2TB Toshiba. Some might find this surprising - after all, you'd expect the console's internal SATA connection to offer improved performance over USB. Well, we can only speculate, but we suspect that running the OS in the background in addition to recording off the gameplay stream has an impact on bandwidth, and that's something an external unit doesn't need to deal with. Indeed, the USB 3.0 connection clearly has enough bandwidth to accommodate fast drives such as SSDs and hybrid SSHD storage devices, although right now it's clear that games don't really benefit from a boost in speed as much as some PS3 games (such as Gran Turismo 5 or Rage) did in the past. Indeed, the overall conclusion we draw is that there's little point exploring exotic options like solid-state storage, hybrid drives or faster mechanical drives at this point in time. There's no real advantage to doing so, and no revelatory increase to game performance or any truly game-changing decreases to loading times. SSD offers some small loading time advantages but nothing really worth the exorbitant prices, while the performance uptick offered - in theory - by a faster mechanical drive, or a hybrid, mostly failed to materialise. Once again, improvements we did see in streaming-intensive titles just don't justify the additional cost of a solid state or hybrid solution. In essence, the results are much the same as our recent PlayStation 4 hard drive upgrade testing - any purchasing decision should be dictated by how much money you're paying per gigabyte as opposed to performance considerations. Time and time again, our value Ј69.99 USB 3.0 passport drive kept up admirably with the pricier, more exotic storage options during our testing, despite its spec deficiencies. That's good news for your wallet, though the hardcore may feel some lingering disappointment that the one upgradable element of the new Microsoft console doesn't offer any palpable improvements over the cheap and cheerful option. Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here. About David Bierton. Read more articles from David Bierton by visiting the David Bierton archive page. Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!