What is the Best External Hard Drive for Xbox One

Storage is one of the biggest deciding factors when it comes to most of our day to day consumer devices like our Phones, Laptops, PCs, and Tablets. Although, we often overlook the storage capacity of our Gaming Consoles, specifically the Xbox One. Xbox One comes in 500-gigabyte and 1-terabyte variants, now I know what you’re thinking, Marv, “that’s a lot of storage!” and you would be correct, but you would also be incorrect. You see, with games like Red Dead Redemption coming in at a whopping 90GB and Black Ops 4 at 55GB, both the 500GB and 1TB variants would fill up very quickly. The easiest way to fix this issue is to pick up an external Hard Drive, but What is the Best External Hard Drive for Xbox One? This is what we will be discussing today.

Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive ?

Solid State Drive (SSD) and Hard Disk Drive are your 2 options when choosing an external hard drive for your Xbox One, both have their Pros and Cons.

The Pros of SSDs are they have no moving parts like traditional Hard Drives, this allows them to have a longer life span, read and write faster, draw less power and come in a smaller form factor. The only real Con is that they cost more per gigabyte than a traditional Hard Disk Drive.

In my opinion the only time you should ever consider a Hard Disk Drive is if money is an issue, even then I would choose to save up money and then purchasing an SSD.

Size and Performance

The size of the Hard Drive is really up to you and your gaming needs, some people might need an extra 500 GB and others might need up to 2 TB. Keeping in mind we will be going down the SSD route, this will be the only drawback and something you need to budget for. As mentioned above SSDs have a higher cost per gigabyte than traditional HDD. Some SSDs go as big as 60 TB but more consumer-friendly SSDs average around the 2TB at the top end, anything higher will cost you an arm and a leg.

SSD performance far exceeds any HDD you can get, even the cheapest SSD can sometimes be up to 3x Faster than a more expensive HDD. This works well when gaming and can noticeably reduce game load times. When it comes to performance figures you want to look at the SSDs write/read speeds. Most of the decent consumer level drives can achieve 560mbps Read/Write speed which is more than enough for gaming, there are a few outliers namely the LaCie Bolt3 Professional SSD, it has a monstrous read/write speed of 2800mbps/2300mbps and an enormous price to match.

Compatibility

The Xbox One supports external hard drives through the use of USB 3.0, this leaves you with a stack of options as most manufacturers now support this standard. Keep in mind there are SSDs out there that don’t use USB 3.0 yet, so make sure you do your research.

Which SSD Should I Buy?

I’ve put together a quick list of my favorite SSDs in a couple of categories to help you see through the copious amount of SSDs on the market at the moment.

Best Value

Seagate Fast SSD

 This hard drive ticks all the boxes, in real-world usage you can get up to 460MBps read speeds and 455MBps write speeds, Seagate claims it can go as high as 540MBps. This thing looks very elegant with a thin form factor that will have you receiving compliments, seriously, this is easily one of the best designed external SSDs on the market today.

The reason I put the Seagate Fast SSD in the best value category is its pricing, you would think that something that looks this good and performs this well would be priced much higher. At the time of writing this article, you can pick up the 500GB model for $109.99 USD on Amazon.

The Best Performance

Samsung T5 Portable SSD

 Samsung has created one of the most critically acclaimed external SSDs on the market. This is one seriously fast SSD and is only slightly edged out in the looks department by Seagate Fast SSD, although this device is easy on the eyes. No larger than a credit card and can fit in the palm of your hand, Samsung has created a performance monster with real life read/write speed of 540MBps.

With it full metal design this device stands out on all fronts, surprisingly, it priced very competitively. At the time of writing this article you can pick up the 500GB model for $114.99 USD on Amazon and the 1TB model will set you back $197.99 USD.

Budget Friendly

VectoTech Rapid

 The VectoTech Rapid is for those that have a tight budget. When you first pick up the VectoTech is feels cheap and surprisingly light, once you plug it in you should receive up to 420MBps read/write speeds which is pretty good compared to the other devices mentioned above. Looks aren’t everything and if you are looking for a cheap and reliable option then the VectoTech Rapid is for you

It comes in Black or Silver and that’s pretty much it, I know it not Sandisk or Samsung but to be fair it has received a lot of praise from consumers and in most experiences, consumers are pleasantly surprised. At the time of writing this article, you can pick up the 250GB model for $58.99 USD and the 500GD model for $99.99 USD on Amazon

Conclusion

And there we have it, hopefully, this article has helped you make a decision on an external hard drive for your Xbox One. I will always recommend a SSD over a HDD when it comes to gaming and especially consoles. You will notice a big difference in initial game load times and in-game load times, this improves the overall gaming experience because let’s be honest, nobody likes waiting around.

If you found this article informative, please feel free comment below and let me know