Can an Xbox One S optical drive be used as an external usb disc drive for the Xbox Series S?

Hi Oliver.

No external optical drives will be supported on the Series S/X. For disc based gaming, you will need to purchase the Series X, NOT s.

Hi,

You can use USB external SSD drives on Series X/S or you can buy a 2.5" PC SSD and attach it to a SATA to USB 3.1 adaptor.

These drives are a lot faster than a standard USB 3 external HDD. However, you can only play Xbox One, Xbox 360 and original Xbox BC titles directly from them. Series X/S games can only be played from the internal drive or the optional Expansion Card.

The Series S is digital download ONLY, and comes WITHOUT an optical drive, so unfortunately not. Only the Series X of next gen Xbox's will have a optical drive.

You can see more information here : Series S.

if i took the cd drive out of an xbox one s and attached it via usb to an xbox series s, would it be able to run discs?

You have names mixed up. There are no consoles named the Xbox One Series S or Xbox One Series X.

The Xbox One/One S/One X all have a disc drive.

The Xbox One S All Digital Edition does not have a disc drive.

The Xbox Series X has a disc drive.

The Xbox Series S does not have a disc drive.

All the consoles can play backward compatible games. The Series S and One S all digital edition can only play games digitally downloaded.

The other consoles can play games from disc and from digitally downloaded,

I hope this clears things up for you.