Xbox Planning Big Storage Upgrade

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Summary

  • The Xbox Series X/S could soon support external drives over 16TB, increasing game storage options.
  • Users in the Xbox Insider Alpha Skip-Ahead ring will receive an update allowing support for larger external USB drives.
  • Increased storage options could benefit gamers with larger games and more titles.

The Xbox Series X/S could be getting bigger storage options soon. With many new games needing more space, the Xbox Series X and S’s 16 terabyte limit for external hard drives is easy to fill up. The Xbox Series S in itself only has 512 gigabytes of internal storage to use, so the need to utilize external options might be a necessity for most gamers who truly want to maximize their systems.

Currently, Storage Expansion Card options are currently limited to a maximum of 2 TB. However, there are many other options for expanding the Xbox Series X/S storage via SSDs and hard drives. Still, even with the variety of commercial choices for these forms of storage, the Xbox hardware still limits users to the aforementioned 16 TB limit. Surprisingly, it looks like Microsoft will try to move away from this limitation via a future update.

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Xbox Insiders who are part of the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring will be receiving a new Xbox Update Preview. According to the release notes, there will now be support for external USB drives larger than 16 TB. The catch is that drives will need to be reformatted to utilize this change. Once formatted, new partitions will then exist within the drive, which will also appear as multiple devices. Considering that there are many large Xbox One games that can be saved to the external drive, Xbox owners won’t have to worry much about size limitations. Granted, they would still need to purchase the HDD with more space to begin with.

This seems like a step in the right direction to help Xbox owners. With technology continuing to advance, games could eventually get bigger. More storage options could also help entice gamers to play more titles and download more digital software. With how expensive Xbox Storage Expansion Cards are, having an alternate option to store downloaded titles could help gamers ease into the decision of buying digital games, or even buying the Xbox Series S as their console of choice.

Still, with all these updates, Microsoft has mentioned that there is currently an issue with some drives larger than 16TB. Some external HDDs do not reflect the correct information and free space available, and the current advice is to not format drives that have more than 16TB. This is an understandable oversight as those part of the Alpha group are sort of like testers. With the Xbox Insider program rolling out new features, it is expected that some could have lingering issues that still need to be sorted out before it gets released to all Xbox owners in the future.

Xbox Update Preview Release Notes

  • Expand Your Xbox Storage with Support for Larger Drives

We are enabling support for external USB drives larger than 16TB, so you can be sure your favorite games are always ready to play! Newly formatted drives that are larger than 16TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to utilize all available space for games and apps. These will appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list.

  • Spot Great Deals from the Comfort of Home

Today’s update makes finding discounts easier than ever. A random subset of users will see a new badge we’re adding to games on sale that you don’t already have access to, showing the percentage off directly on your Home screen.

Fixes to improve Narrator readout in Settings, particularly in power options and when enabling remote play.

Fixed an issue where some media apps could become laggy or sluggish after extended playback.

Various updates to properly reflect local languages across the console.

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