Xbox is planning a major storage upgrade

Summary

  • The Xbox Series X/S could soon support external drives over 16TB, expanding game storage options.

  • Users in the Xbox Insider Alpha Skip-Ahead circle will receive an update to support larger external USB drives.

  • Greater storage options could benefit players with larger games and more titles.

The Xbox Series X/S they might get more storage options soon. With many new games needing more space, it's easy to fill the 16 terabyte limit on the Xbox Series X and S external hard drives. The Xbox Series S itself only has 512 gigabytes of internal storage to use, so the need to use an external option may be a must for most players who really want to max out their systems.

Currently, memory expansion card options are currently limited to a maximum of 2 TB. However, there are many other options for expanding Xbox Series X/S storage via SSDs and hard drives. Yet, despite a number of commercial options for these forms of storage, Xbox hardware still limits users to the aforementioned 16 TB limit. Surprisingly, it looks like Microsoft will try to move away from this limitation through a future update.

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Xbox Insiders who are part of the Alpha Skip-Ahead circle will receive a new preview of the Xbox update. According to the release notes, support for external USB drives larger than 16TB will now be available. The catch is that the drives will need to be reformatted to take advantage of this change. After formatting, there will be new partitions on the drive, which will also appear as multiple devices. Since there are many large Xbox One games that can be saved to an external drive, Xbox owners won't have to worry too much about size limitations. It is true that they would have to buy a HDD with more space to begin with.

This seems to be a step in the right direction to help Xbox owners. As technology continues to advance, games could get bigger over time. More storage options could also help entice gamers to play more titles and download more digital software. Given how expensive Xbox Storage Expansion Cards are, an alternative option to store downloaded titles could help make it easier for gamers to decide whether to buy digital games or even purchase an 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 available free space, and the current advice is not to format drives that are more than 16TB. This is an understandable oversight, as members of the Alpha group are something of a tester. As the Xbox Insider program rolls out new features, it is expected that some may have lingering issues that need to be resolved before it is released to all Xbox owners in the future.

Xbox Update Preview Release Notes

  • Expand your Xbox storage with support for larger drives

We're 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 16 TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to use all available space for games and applications. It will appear as multiple devices in the list of storage devices.

  • Discover great deals from the comfort of your home

Today's update makes finding discounts easier than ever. A random subset of users will see a new badge we're adding to sale games you don't already have access to, showing the discount percentage right on the home screen.

Fixes to improve readability in Settings, especially in power options and when enabling remote play.

Fixed an issue where some media apps could slow down or slow down after playing for a long time.

Various updates to correctly reflect local languages ​​in the console.

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