Games are getting more extensive than they have ever been, but your Xbox One’s internal hard drive isn’t expanding to match that up. With internal Xbox storage spanning from 500GB to 2TB, you will need to upgrade to an external drive eventually to hold more games (especially if you are an avid gamer).
Fortunately, Xbox One supports the smooth insertion of portable hard drives through USB of various sizes and formats, making this a simple problem to fix. To get them up and running, you’ll have to jump through a few hoops, but the procedure is straightforward and easy.
While we already have an extensive list of the best external drives that you can purchase, we will tell you how Xbox owners can choose the correct external drive and make sure that it works properly.
How To Use an External Hard Drive With Xbox
External storage on the Xbox One is relatively straightforward. All you have to do is connect a USB external hard drive to one of the console’s ports.
It would be best if you kept this always connected; otherwise, you risk losing data and having to repair the drive every time it is removed.
To make life simpler for you, we have included some specific steps below:
- Connect your external hard drive to a USB port on your Xbox One and format it.
- Give your external drive a name.
- Select Install new things here to have future titles automatically installed on this drive.
Internal storage drives in Xbox consoles range from 500 gigabytes (GB) to two terabytes (TB). A large proportion of this space is dedicated to games and applications, with some space set aside for the console operating system and other system software.
To manage both internal and external storage, follow these steps:
- Hit the Xbox button on your controller.
- Select Profile and System, and press Settings options. After that, select System > Storage from the drop-down menu.
- A graphic for each drive is displayed on the Storage devices panel, along with the percentage of storage used and available free storage.
- Choose a drive to View contents. It will take you to your games and files, where you can check how your storage is being used.
How to Transfer Items from Internal to External Storage
Items can be moved from internal to external storage by following simple steps. You can transfer games to an external drive if they take up a lot of space on your system.
- Press the Xbox button and select My games & applications > See all > Games.
- Select Manage game and add-ons after picking a game and pressing the Menu button.
- Click on Move or Copy from the game box in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Make your changes in the Transfer section.
- Select a From drive if a game is installed in multiple locations.
- The To drive where you want your game to move to.
- Check the boxes for the items you wish to transfer and then press Copy selected or Move selected. Copy selected will keep the game files on the current drive and copy the game files to the To drive.
- When you click on Move selected, the game files will be copied to the To drive, and the game will be uninstalled from the From drive.
What Kind of External Hard Drive Works With Xbox?
All Xbox One games, including those purchased on disk, must be put on the console’s hard drive before being used. There are several symptoms of a failing hard drive, including strange noises, overheating, disk errors, and slow performance of the system.
You can’t repair or upgrade the Xbox One’s built-in hard drive without voiding your warranty, so unless you are willing to take that risk, you are forced to stick with the default drive.
On Xbox One, external drives must be at least 256GB and support USB 3.0. The old and slow USB 2.0 drives are not supported anymore, ensuring that data transfers between your console and the external drives are lightning-fast.
So, choosing the optimal storage device from the several possibilities is critical to having the best Xbox One experience. Your purchasing approach will become much easier if you know what to search for precisely in the market.
Simply keep your requirements and priorities in mind, and you will be on your way to making a decent buy.
The simplest method to narrow down your options is to figure out how much storage space you require. Your goal should be to have as much storage as possible for the least amount of money (without sacrificing performance).
We have gone over some of the most important things to look for when buying a hard drive for your Xbox One. Still, other variables like portability, design, reliability, and connectivity also play a role in determining which hard drive is suitable for you.
