After reformatting, I added it to the hub. Fire OS saw the drive, I then formatted it for device storage. When done I installed a couple of apps on it, including Kodi. Those few drives that do support the best Xbox Series X games are well worth your hard-earned cash. If only because they greatly expand the console’s approximate 800GB of workable storage. Yes, the box might claim 1TB from the get-go, but that’s not including the space required for the Xbox Series X’s operating system. It’s a similar story on the Xbox Series S, too, which only features roughly 364GB of operational storage despite the 512GB claim.

Interface type: The Xbox One series of consoles supports up to two external hard drives, connected via a USB 3 cable. This is important: the Xbox One doesn’t support newer USB 3.1 gen 2, or indeed USB-C or other miniaturised versions of the USB connector (miniUSB or microUSB). Fortunately, most modern external hard drives have a USB 3 cable, so you won’t need to worry too much about this. With a 5,400 RPM drive, you're again looking at standard performance for older games. Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Original Xbox games won't load extra fast, but you also won't have any issues playing these games. You'll also be able to keep your SSD space clear for the handful of titles that you are playing.You won’t actually notice much difference in terms of general gameplay, so the main advantage of an SSD is the significant reductions in your loading times. Here, much depends on the individual game. Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t really load any faster with an SSD than it does with an external HDD, but when loading saved games it’s a different story. While you could be looking at a nearly two minute (133 second) wait on Xbox One X with an external HDD, that drops to just 71 seconds with an SSD. It's totally up to you whether you go for capacity in the form of HDD, or shoot for faster performance in the form of an SSD. No matter what you choose, one of the best Xbox One hard drives will be an extremely handy tool to have in your console's loadout. I did ding it once star due to the noise, I wasn't expecting that & really don't want to put up with it in my den while watching shows anyway. We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the Xbox Series S and Series X. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level, or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive.

While Toshiba sells a gaming-specific version of its Canvio external HDD, the Canvio Flex is the current king when it comes to price, performance and value. It’s cheaper than most competitors, yet also one of the fastest portable HDDs we’ve tested. Our PC benchmarks place its sequential read/write speeds over a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A connection at 151.5MB/sec and 158.9MB/sec, and there’s precious little in it between the Canvio Flex and Canvio Gaming when it comes to random read/write speeds. Plugged into the Xbox Series X, it’s very competitive with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive, taking four seconds longer to load a saved game in Prey, but coming first by just under three seconds in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can also save a minute or so over slower drives when it comes to moving or copying installed games. Sure, it’s nowhere near as speedy as an SSD, but if you just want a drive for archiving Series S/X games and playing your old Xbox One favourites, this could be all you need.

The best external drives for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S

The Seagate Xbox Storage Expansion Card is the first product that arises in conversations about the best Xbox Series X SSDs. Launching the same year as the console itself, it enjoyed a reputation as the be-all-end-all of storage expansion for Microsoft’s current-gen machine. That may not be as true now as it was before 2023, but it’s still a superb choice for gamers looking to greatly increase storage capacity. You’re on a budget: You might want to look elsewhere if you were hoping to spend less overall on an external SSD. It came formatted NTFS, for my purposes it needed to be FAT32 so I reformatted it. At first I though all was well but over a few days it became apparent that it was not suitable. Probably pulls too much power. in one of the best Xbox One external hard drives will go far. We're talking around 50 games, depending on what they are. Smaller, retro style games may only take up a few gigs, while some newer AAA titles are upwards of 80-100GB. Either way, 2TB is sure to futureproof you. Do all external hard drives work with Xbox One? Schließt man die Festplatte direkt über USB 3.x an einem PC/Laptop an, hat sie für eine magnetische einen guten Durchsatz siehe CrystalDiskMark von über 250 MB/s sequentiell. In der Praxis kopiert sie kleinere Dateien z.B. MP3-Dateien mit um die 200MB/s. Ein guter Durchsatz.