We’re all familiar with the annoying problem of not having enough space on your Xbox One for a new video game. Even if you got the 1TB Xbox One model, it seems like all of that space disappears after just a few game installs. And it does, largely because games are so large in size. Games these days are reaching well over 100GB in size, even more so if you’ve downloaded an Open World game where there’s a lot of extra assets and graphics to install.
Luckily, you don’t have to get rid of any video games off of the console if you want to add more. No, you can simply purchase an external drive that hooks up to your Xbox One to house all of your additional games. This saves a lot of hassle of trying to figure out what must go, and how much space you need to free up for your new title. Simply plug your new external drive into your Xbox One, and you can download and/or move games over to it!
So if you’re ready to make room for some Xbox One games, follow along below!
Why do you need an external drive?
The need for an external drive might seem obvious — you’re Xbox One is at its maximum storage capacity, but there aren’t any games you want to get rid of. So how do you install all of the new and exciting titles launching soon? Well, purchase an external hard drive with lots of storage space that’s made for the Xbox One. With a drive like this, you can either install all of your new games to the drive, or you can move many of your games on the Xbox One over to the drive.
They’re really nice to have for at least two reasons. They allow you to expand your Xbox One’s storage space without opening the console up and upgrading the hard drive. That can be a little risky, so an external drive makes things safe. On top of that, external drives are extremely portable and versatile. Need to pack up your gaming system? No worries — the external drive fits compactly in your suitcase.
And yes, that drive really is versatile — you can use it for other machines as well. You might need to store a couple of documents on it, so it makes it fairly simple to plug it into your laptop or computer to accomplish that, too.
How do you hook an external drive up?
Hooking an external drive up to your Xbox One is easy. Set the external drive somewhere next to your Xbox One where it hopefully won’t collect too much dust. Next, plug the data cable into the external hard drive, and the other end (usually a USB end) into the Xbox One.
Once hooked up, the Xbox One will automatically recognize it. On the screen, when asked how to configure the drive, select the Yes button. Next, enter a name for your drive, and then finally, you can choose whether to install games to it by default.
If you want to transfer your internal games over to the external drive. Just head into your System settings, select Storage > Internal Drive and then press the Transfer button. The wizard will take you through the steps from there, usually asking you to choose the games you want to transfer over and such.
We think, for the Xbox One, you’ll like the Western Digital 4TB external hard drive the most. It has plenty of storage space for installing games to. Western Digital even offers the same hard drive all the way up to 10TB in size.
This is a no frills external hard drive. There’s no fancy LED lights, or indications of how much storage space you have left. You simply hook this storage drive up to your Xbox One, and you’re ready to start installing games to it or transferring games over to it after the initial software configuration, which the Xbox One detects automatically.
If you’re looking for a way to expand the storage in your Xbox One, this external Western Digital drive is the way to go. There’s plenty of storage space inside, and it should have enough space for you to keep installing games for years to come. Setting up any external drive is quite easy, as you’ve already seen — there’s not much more to it than plugging in the external drive, and then following the software configuration wizard on the Xbox.