This is NOT news

It's not "fact". There are external drives designed for performance. There are external drives designed for backup. "Data transfer" doesn't generate heat. Head movement might generate some, but the biggest generator of heat is that the drive rotates in the
first place.

Games are optimized to stream in data in large chunks. Games do not go crazy with random access because that's orders of magnitude slower than sequential reading. The heads aren't going to be jumping all over the place.

No one says you have to stick a HDD in a USB enclosure, either. Get an SSD. It's what I did for my Xbox One. It's what I did for my PS4s. Mechanical storage for games is kinda meh, be it internal or external.

 

@IceStorm

Seriously? You are well aware that HD's spin up and down depending if they are idle or accessing data. Faster it spins, the hotter it gets. Even in a cooled PC tower HD's will exceed 100F easily. Put that HD into a little plastic case with tiny vents it'll
get even hotter. I mentioned Fantom as an example of HD's that reduce heat so yes some are more designed for "performance".

So what was not a fact?

I agree going with SSD but most people will go into sticker shock looking at the price. Last time I checked a 1TB external would cost more than the console.

 

If this isn't news, then is this a thread?

I'll leave you with that silly thought.

 

I thought IGN was payed By MS? Seriously.

External HDD are the best option. Heres news to the media, Stop letting children do reviews please.

 

I'd consider it news if someone doesn't have an external hard drive. It might give them the heads up to go buy one or at least make space if they need to. There are some decent priced ones out there. I got 2TB for a little over $100.

 

IGN click bait at its finest.

 

Eurogamer article from two days ago benching all the external options.....

www.eurogamer.net/.../digitalfoundry-2014-xbox-one-external-hard-drive-upgrade-guide

For those of you not wanting to read all the techy stuff the last couple paragraphs of the article sums it all up. Or the even shorter version......go cheap because you won't see cost effective performance upgrades from SSD, etc.

With the Day One purchasers warranty's expiring in a month we'll start seeing more internal swaps which will be interesting to see how it impacts load times with the OS.

 

^^ I still don't have an external hard drive lol

Even with all the games I've played on Xbox One, the most space I've used is just under 70%. I don't usually have too many games on the go at once and where I'm lucky that I have a great broadband speed with unlimited downloads, I just delete games I'm not
playing, if I ever want to go back to them I just re-download/install again.

Mind you, when they announce the White Xbox One with a 1 TB hard drive that baby shall be mine

 

Well it is news that a game takes up such a sizeable chunk of a consoles default storage. That you can pay more for external storage doesn't do away with that.

Randver has it spot on, he and IceStorm seem to be saying the same thing but from different angles, that if you are going the external route for playing games off then paying more for a properly cooled model is the way to go.

I have a USB powered backup external for my laptop and that gets warm when moving files to it. I'd hate to think how hot it would get if I were trying to play a game off it for hours at a time.

TLDR: If you want to play games of an external. Buy one with proper cooling. Hard drives do die, don't help them on their way.

 

I moved my external into a new caddy with fans best move i made its always using hdd to play a game off