Can You Use a Regular Hard Drive for Xbox One

Present, an external difficult bulldoze for your Xbox One is at all-time an accented necessity. Mod games require a crazy amount of storage space – elevation sellers similar Red Dead Redemption 2 or Phone call of Duty: Modern Warfare volition exceed the 100GB marker. Given that most of the states chose to save some cash and nab the Xbox One or One South with 500GB of internal storage, it'due south no wonder that a proficient external hard drive is essential; later on all, who in their right mind could stand up to only have a small fraction of their game library installed at any one fourth dimension?

Luckily, we've been busy compiling a list of the all-time external hard drives you can buy for your Xbox 1. All Xbox One consoles volition work with up to two external hard drives, and with capacities ranging from 500GB all the mode up to 8TB in size there's no reason to ever experience constrained past storage space once more. Y'all can proceed all your favourite games installed, and best of all, y'all don't take to spend much to arrive happen.

Below, you'll find our guide to choosing the all-time external hard drive for you. If you already sympathize the basics, keep scrolling or use this link to skip right to our option of the best external hard drives for Xbox Ane.

Looking for next-gen storage? Try our roundup of the best external drives for Xbox Series X

How to choose the best external difficult drive for your Xbox One

What are the most important things to expect for?

Interface type: The Xbox I series of consoles supports upwards to two external difficult drives, connected via a USB 3 cablevision. 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, near modernistic external hard drives accept a USB 3 cablevision, and so y'all won't need to worry as well much virtually this.

Portable or desktop? We will e'er recommend buying a portable external hard drive for your Xbox One. These drives don't require a dedicated mains ability supply, which just means you accept i less cable to worry about. The downside is that they tend to max out at 4TB; if you need more than space, you'll need a desktop external hard drive, and therefore a spare wall socket to plug information technology in.

Optional extras: Some of these drives volition double as a USB iii.0 hub. While they will take upward one USB port on the back of your Xbox One, you'll gain two ports that are easier to reach.

READ Side by side: The best controllers for Xbox One

How much storage space practise I need?

Let'due south assume y'all want to keep your entire game library installed. It depends a little bit on how many games you own, although if you're in the market for an external difficult drive you're clearly looking to install more than merely Fortnite, Apex Legends and the latest FIFA.

Game sizes are getting bigger all the time. Here's a list of some of Amazon'southward best-selling Xbox One games, and roughly how much space they will take up on your Xbox Ane (we've included depression-storage titles similar Fortnite for reference):

Game storage requirements - Xbox I S/Xbox I X

Fortnite	20GB/40GB
Apex Legends	30GB
FIFA 20	40GB
Doom Eternal	40GB
Borderlands 3	40GB
Gears 5	58GB/64GB
Forza Horizon 4	63GB
Grand Theft Auto V	73GB
Halo: The Master Master Collection	73GB
Red Dead Redemption II	107GB
Call of Duty: Modernistic Warfare (2020)	185GB

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As you can see, it's very easy to fill an Xbox One hard bulldoze with games – particularly if you're stuck with the 500GB model. We recommend ownership an external hard drive with at least 2TB of storage; if you buy and download a lot of games – or yous're a heavy user of Microsoft's excellent Xbox Games Laissez passer service – then 4TB is a pretty sensible investment.

Should I buy an external SSD?

You might call up yous demand an ultra-fast hard deejay for gaming, but the bulldoze in the Xbox One X itself is actually an average 5,400RPM hard disk, and almost USB iii.0 difficult drives will requite you lot equivalent or better performance. This makes information technology tempting to plump for an external SSD, which has significantly faster read and write performance. Nonetheless, information technology's going to toll yous a whole lot more, with prices starting at around £120 to £150 for a 1TB external USB 3.0 SSD.

You won't actually detect much deviation in terms of general gameplay, and so the main reward of an SSD is the meaning reductions in your loading times. Hither, much depends on the individual game. Red Expressionless Redemption ii doesn't really load whatever faster with an SSD than it does with an external HDD, only when loading saved games it's a unlike story. While you lot could be looking at a nearly ii minute (133 2d) wait on Xbox One Ten with an external HDD, that drops to just 71 seconds with an SSD.

Endeavor Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and you'll see loading times for the game itself drop by effectually three seconds, merely the wait while a saved game loads reduced by roughly a third – from 29 seconds down to 19.

That might make the toll of an SSD worth paying if you're tired of long waits to load areas in titles like the to a higher place, Monster Hunter Globe or Assassinator'due south Creed: Odyssey and Valhalla. And if you're playing something similar Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, those seconds wasted while a save game loads tin really mountain upwards.

READ Adjacent: All-time external hard drives for PC

The best external hard drives for Xbox One

1. Western Digital MyPassport: Best external difficult drive for Xbox One

Price when reviewed: 2TB, £74; 4TB, £98 | Buy now from Amazon

Western Digital's MyPassport portable drive has everything going for it as an Xbox One add-on. You tin buy it in White or Blackness to match your Xbox, and it fifty-fifty comes in a function polish gloss, office textured finish that echoes the styling of the Xbox One Due south.

Operation isn't astounding, with sequential transfer speeds of 115MB/sec read and 113MB/sec write, plus random read/write speeds of 0.6MB/sec and 1.55MB/sec, but load times are perfectly acceptable fifty-fifty with the greater demands of the Xbox Ane Ten. It's a tough trivial unit, unobtrusive and quiet, and the 4TB version is excellent value at simply under £100. Buy it and you'll take a whole lot of space for your growing games collection.

Key specs – Type: Portable HDD; Connectivity: USB iii; Spindle speed: five,400rpm; Size: 110 10 82 x 22mm

2. Seagate Expansion Portable: The all-time value HDD for Xbox I

Price: £44 (1TB), £57 (2TB), £92 (4TB), £97 (5TB) | Buy now from Amazon

It's non the fastest bulldoze and far from the virtually stylish, but the Expansion Portable gives plenty of room for your games library or Games Pass downloads along with very respectable speeds. The 2TB version reaches read speeds of 132MB/sec and write speeds of 129MB/sec, both in excess of the 120MB/sec quoted. True, it'south a mesomorphic little slab of plastic, but information technology's more robust than many upkeep drives and very quiet. The 2TB version is the one to go for if yous're brusk on cash, just if you lot desire the most gigabytes for your buck, the 5TB version is an accented steal.

Key specs – Blazon: Portable HDD; Connectivity: USB 3; Spindle speed: 5,400RPM; Size: 117 10 80 x 15mm

iii. Seagate Xbox One Game Drive: Best official difficult drive for Xbox One

Price: £68 (2TB), £99 (4TB) | Purchase now from Amazon

Seagate's Xbox 1 Game Drive should be the obvious option for storage upgraders. It comes in Xbox green, white or a special edition Sea of Thieves design, and bears the Xbox logo. Information technology'south slim, quiet and equally easy every bit whatever other bulldoze to get working and the pricing is competitive.

The only thing that counts confronting it is that most models use the same difficult drives as the slightly cheaper Seagate Expansion, with most-identical performance. Y'all're effectively paying between £2 to £40 more for the casing (and a one-month Xbox Games Laissez passer and an exclusive Sea of Thieves weapon in the Sea of Thieves edition). Unsurprisingly, there'south more of a price premium on the 4TB models, although we experience it's arguably nonetheless worth the fiddling extra.

Key specs – Blazon: Portable HDD; Connectivity: USB three; Spindle speed: 5,400rpm; Size: 117 x lxxx x 21mm

four. WD_Black P10: The best console gaming bulldoze for Xbox One

Price: £lxx (1TB), £94 (3TB), £115 (5TB) | Purchase at present from Amazon

Western Digital'due south Black line of HDDs has e'er had a adept reputation with PC gamers, and the P10 serial brings the same rugged build quality and performance to console gamers. These Xbox-specific versions accept the same cool, industrial design as the standard P10 versions, only in unusual capacities, with 1TB, 3TB and 5TB versions all bachelor. At that place's even a whopping 12TB desktop version with a faster seven,200rpm hard bulldoze.

With the basic versions, performance is on a par with WD'south excellent MyPassport Ultra drives, with sequential read/write speeds of 133MB/sec and 129MB/sec – peachy given that the P10s aren't significantly more expensive. Cheaper and faster drives are available, simply this is our pick of the panel-focused bunch.

Primal specs – Blazon: Portable HDD; Connectivity: USB 3; Spindle speed: v,400RPM; Size: 118 10 88 x 21mm

5. Seagate Game Drive Hub: Best high-capacity difficult drive for Xbox I

Price: 8TB, £152 | Buy at present from Argos

Practise you take a truly massive games collection? Are y'all an Xbox Games Laissez passer subscriber intent on downloading every title? Then you lot're going to need to button beyond the usual 4TB and go for a desktop bulldoze. Seagate'due south Game Bulldoze Hub isn't your cheapest option but we'd say the extra is worth information technology. Not only do y'all get a humungous 8TB of space – plenty for around 200 Xbox One games – but two front-facing USB iii.0 ports, softening the accident of losing one of your console's ports to host the bulldoze.

Information technology's as well a speedy number; with sequential transfer speeds of over 200MB/sec, it's actually a niggling faster than your Xbox One's internal drive. Add in a black and white casing designed to lucifer your Xbox One, and information technology'southward a great drive for the most hardcore of hardcore gamers – fifty-fifty if yous need to observe another ability outlet for the drive's Ac adapter.

Central specs – Type: Desktop HDD; Connectivity: USB three; Spindle speed: seven,200RPM; Size: 118 x 198 x 41mm

6. SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD: The best value SSD for Xbox One

Price: 500GB, £ninety; 1TB, £160; 2TB, £338 | Buy now from Amazon

The SanDisk Extreme makes a dandy Xbox SDD; information technology'due south relatively cheap by SSD standards, but also fast, rugged and reliable. With maximum read/write speeds of 442MB/sec and 497MB/sec over USB3, it's going to cut downward your loading times on fifty-fifty the biggest games. We saw waiting times for a Red Expressionless Redemption 2 save game driblet by over a minute, and on games where there are frequent reloads (hello Dark Souls III, Doom Eternal and Sekiro) you could find yourself spending a lot more time playing, and a lot less time staring at a loading screen.

True, there are faster 1050MB/sec and 2000MB/sec SSDs bachelor – including SanDisk's Extreme Pro models – but they're a lot more expensive and you lot'll simply shave a second off here and there. Nosotros yet think an HDD is the way to become in terms of getting some much-needed capacity, simply if you've got the want and the money to get down the SSD route, this is a great drive to do it with.

Key specs – Type: Portable SSD; Connectivity: USB 3; Spindle speed: N/A; Size: 96 x 49.5 x 89mm

7. Samsung T5: The best high-performance SSD for Xbox Ane

Price: £88 (500GB), £140 (1TB), £275 (2TB) | Buy at present from Amazon

While in that location are faster SSDs available, the Samsung T5 is about as fast as we'd recommend for the Xbox One. It tin attain read/write speeds of up to 554MB/sec and 519MB/sec, and then you can expect shorter loads and reloads than an HDD, and it'll still perform well in an Xbox Series S or Serial X if you upgrade later. While information technology'south primarily a USB-C drive, a USB-A cable is provided and it'll work just like any other bulldoze with an Xbox console.

Its other strengths are that it'southward a very robust bulldoze, thank you to its sleek powder-coated aluminium shell, and admittedly tiny, measuring but 74 10 57mm, and only 11mm thick. The SanDisk Extreme Portable is slightly better value, but if every second counts while you look for a saved game to load, buying this SSD will save you one or two, fourth dimension after fourth dimension.

Key specs – Type: Portable SSD; Connectivity: USB 3.ii Gen2; Spindle speed: N/A; Size: 74 x 57 10 11mm

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Source: https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/external-hard-drives/1407986/best-external-hard-drive-xbox-one

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