Storage Alternatives for XBOX versus internal drive

OklaGrizzlyBear · Jul 15, 2019

I've seen a lot of discussions and questions about losing games and data when a XBOX unfortunately crashes and may need replacement. Saved game data is usually lost. An alternative is an external hard drive for your XBOX. I personally use 2 external hard
drives for all of my storage needs versus using the internal hard drive. My first external drive I started with was a Seagate 4TB External Hard drive. It plugs directly into a USB port on the back of my XBOX One X and then I added a Seagate 8TB External Hard
drive. Then I simply went into Settings, then storage then set the 8TB as my default drive with the 4TB as a secondary. This has multiple benefits as you not only have your games and data separate in case of XBOX failure but you can also take the drive with
you to other locations and play the games on another XBOX.

:)

Biggshow

Frankly, I am not a massive fan of this "external" hard drive. I find that even after I have added it to my Xbox One, I still need to keep deleting games and data from my internal HD. So for me.. it is all confusing and annoying. Updates and all that keep
getting added. Some at 30 GB plus. So in the end I am still deleting my games after adding these external HDs.

Egari

In the past I've needed to reset my Xbox One to factory defaults for whatever odd reason (honestly can't remember), after which I started using a 2TB external HDD. This turned out to be a huge time saver when I switched over to the Xbox One X.

I noticed on my Xbox One that a lot of games actually start/load quicker when stored on an external HDD, this makes some degree of sense though, since the connection for USB was faster than it's connection for the internal drive. Xbox One X improved on that,
but I'm still partial to my external drive just because of it's portability.

The performance difference for Xbox One X, will most likely depend on the external disk you're willing to use. The large benefit being you're fully in control of what drive you use, including but not limited to SSD. However, in most cases, you'll be just
fine with any decent desktop external HDD.

CyberKnoxx

That's great advice. I personally have a 4TB for my games and another 4TB for the DVR.

Northern Lass

I use external hard drives on my Xbox ones simply so I can have more games installed than the internal HD can hold. I've never had any problem with using them but I don't really use them as portable drives.

Given game saves are now backed up to the cloud I don't really worry about issues as I know I can get my save back and can redownload most games I have purchased if there is ever an issue.

LiThIuMxFaLcOn

I have one 5TB external and I'm not even close to filling it up. I've had it for over 4 years now too.

Storage Alternatives for XBOX versus internal drive