Xbox Update Blows The Lid Off External Storage Limit To Support Massive Drives
As someone who recently got the Xbox Series X with a 1TB drive, I quickly learned that this storage amount was not enough. With multiple games that have a 100GB and above size requirement, you can quickly fill up the paltry 1TB of built-in storage. Furthermore, access to the excellent Xbox Game Pass means you'll be downloading a plethora of games to just try them out. To add insult to injury, my Xbox Series X is digital only, meaning I absolutely depend on the internal storage.
The good news is that with a recent Xbox update from January 21, 2025, the Xbox Series X/S now supports external drives over 16GB in size. You can find this through a normal Xbox console update in Settings > System > Updates. These drives will be formatted with multiple partitions, which appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list. Microsoft clarifies that drives over 16TB which have already been formatted will need to be reformatted to take advantage of the new changes.
You can now fill up your storage with as many different versions of Goat Simulator as you please.
The good news is that with a recent Xbox update from January 21, 2025, the Xbox Series X/S now supports external drives over 16GB in size. You can find this through a normal Xbox console update in Settings > System > Updates. These drives will be formatted with multiple partitions, which appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list. Microsoft clarifies that drives over 16TB which have already been formatted will need to be reformatted to take advantage of the new changes.
You can now fill up your storage with as many different versions of Goat Simulator as you please.
The Xbox Series X|S does offer the ability to easily add internal storage that's just as fast as the included drive. Devices such as the WD_Black C50 allow you to plug in what is basically a memory card in the form of an external drive. While they are reliable and speedy, prices can be fairly steep for the proprietary devices that slot neatly into the Xbox Series consoles. The 2TB version runs $199 on sale, with the smaller 1TB version around $99 on average.
Seagate was the first to offer these officially licensed hot-swappable drives, with its Storage Expansion Card. Thankfully competition has helped to decrease pricing somewhat, and NVMe drives have since also become more affordable.
This leaves us with other external storage options for the Xbox, including the newly available greater than 16GB limits. Non-proprietary external devices will be considerably cheaper than the slot-in options, with a much more expansive size capacity. The bad news here is that they will not be nearly as fast, with many still being traditional slow-spinning hard drives. While some games may be playable like this, the majority will not result in a playable experience. Such storage drives with large capacities are still good for moving games back and forth, however, for when you don't want to re-download titles.
Seagate was the first to offer these officially licensed hot-swappable drives, with its Storage Expansion Card. Thankfully competition has helped to decrease pricing somewhat, and NVMe drives have since also become more affordable.
This leaves us with other external storage options for the Xbox, including the newly available greater than 16GB limits. Non-proprietary external devices will be considerably cheaper than the slot-in options, with a much more expansive size capacity. The bad news here is that they will not be nearly as fast, with many still being traditional slow-spinning hard drives. While some games may be playable like this, the majority will not result in a playable experience. Such storage drives with large capacities are still good for moving games back and forth, however, for when you don't want to re-download titles.
