Did you know that the average Xbox One game is about 40GB? How about the fact that Red Dead Redemption 2 is almost 90GB alone, and Halo 5 is anticipated to be approximately 100GB? That doesn’t even include DLC for downloaded games, which take up even more precious hard drive space. Plus, as games become more content-rich and graphically superior, these file sizes are only going to get bigger – and that’s a problem for Xbox Series X|S owners.
The premium Xbox Series X launched with a 1TB (1024GB) internal solid state drive (SSD), while the Xbox Series S has a 512GB SSD. However, after removing the approximately 150-200GB operating system and core files from consideration, this leaves the consoles with approximately 800GB and 350GB respectively. That means that the Series X can hold approximately 20 standard games at its maximum (or 8-10 AAA titles), and the Series S can only support around 9 standard titles (or 3-5 AAA titles).
To further add to the problem, the new Xboxes don’t use the standard hard disk drive of past consoles. To speed up the console’s performance, the internal storage is a SSD which is relied on to deliver the faster load times. You can’t simply plug in any old external hard disk drive (HDD) like you would use to store pictures from your computer – if you want to run Xbox Series X|S games, you need an external SSD. Otherwise, your external storage may only run unupgraded Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Xbox Original games from the drive.
Fortunately, while expensive, the Seagate Expansion Card is a Microsoft-endorsed solution to your problem. The 1TB SSD drive is compatible with both the Series X and Series S. It can be utilized the same way that the internal storage device is accessed, which doubles or even triples available storage space. Plus, it’s as easy as plug-and-play in the “storage expansion” slot in the back of the console.
There’s no doubt that consoles with more storage will be coming out in the coming years, and more external SSDs that are compatible with the Xbox Series X|S systems will be released to lower the barrier of entry. For now, users on a budget can download their titles onto standard HDD and shift them to the internal storage when they want to play by managing the storage in the Xbox’s settings, or delete unplayed games to clear space.
