1 TB Expansion Card for Xbox Series S/X Costs $220
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 24, 2020
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32
Seagate’s 1 TB Game Drive for Xbox Series X and Series S is now available for preorder at Best Buy if you’ve already run out of storage somehow. It will cost $220.
According to the listing, the storage module will “instantly expand the peak speed capacity of the most-powerful gaming experience Xbox has ever created with the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S. Effortlessly compatible with the Xbox Velocity Architecture, experience the fastest load times and most dynamic worlds – even improving the overall performance of thousands of Original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games. The ultimate power, speed, and compatibility is now at your fingertips.”
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More to the point, the storage module contains a PCI Express Gen4 x2 (NVMe) Solid State Drive just like the internal drive in the new Xbox consoles, and it’s certified for storing and running next-generation Xbox Series S/X games.
External USB 3.0 storage can also be used, but Microsoft isn’t allowing gamers to run next-gen titles from those types of drives.
Conversation 32 comments
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Travis
Log in to Reply<p>A total of 2TB is not much these days with the size of games what they are. What do you do when you run out of space in a few months? </p>
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hellcatm
Log in to Reply<blockquote><a href="#578530"><em>In reply to Travis:</em></a><em> You buy more and swap between?</em></blockquote><p><br></p>
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darkgrayknight
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578530">In reply to Travis:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can connect regular drives via usb, though this is for the very fast drives.</p>
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curtisspendlove
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578544">In reply to darkgrayknight:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yup. I’d prioritize the games I play often onto the NVMe drives and hook up a large USB SSD for the rest. </p><p><br></p><p>I’m not a huge console gamer but my son has one of my hand-me-down 1TB WD Elements drive on his Xbox One and it works fine. </p><p><br></p><p>You can buy a decent 4GB USB SSD for about $100 US and they are plenty good. If you don’t like Western Digital I’m sure most drive brands have an option. </p>
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sammyg
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578544">In reply to darkgrayknight:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yes I know people that have 4, 6 and 8TB spinning drives connected to their current Xbox via USB. </p><p><br></p><p>The problem is you CANT run a game from this. So now if you buy a new game and you are low on space, and this new game takes up 150gig, you will need to first move the game to your USB drive and if its a spinning drive, go have lunch. Once that is done now buy your new game and download it….go have dinner and then you can play it.</p>
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MutualCore
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578581">In reply to sammyg:</a></em></blockquote><p>It could be worse, PS5 SSD comes with 860GB usable space on first use.</p>
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Travis
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578544">In reply to darkgrayknight:</a></em></blockquote><p>The last sentence in Paul's post says: External USB 3.0 storage can also be used, but Microsoft isn’t allowing gamers to run next-gen titles from those types of drives.</p><p><br></p><p>So you can use those drives if it is for previous gen titles. It may solve the issue in the short term, but not long-term.</p>
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darkgrayknight
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578589">In reply to Travis:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yeah, that will be problem. If you can at least download it to another external usb 3 drive, then copying it back to the internal so you can play it is at least better than having to download it again.</p>
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MutualCore
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578530">In reply to Travis:</a></em></blockquote><p>For real hard-core gamers, they will not have an issue buying 2 of these cards.</p>
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pachi
Log in to Reply<p>This isn't bad at all considering from what I can tell is that these are basically CFexpress cards. and look what a 1TB CFE card goes for… I was expecting worse.</p>
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Elindalyne
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>Sounds about right. PCIE 4.0 ssds are going for about that on Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy etc…</p>
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Usman
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>PCIe Gen 4 drives cost about as much, I wonder if someone will make a third part caddy that can connect standard M2 to this cartridge slot connector.</p>
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murray judy
Log in to Reply<p>My non-existent failed-to-preorder Series X doesn't need memory expansion.</p>
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JCerna
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>I hope that MSFT made it easy for those that like to play legacy games and allow for an auto save to USB External. Leave the space on the drive for the games that need it. No one want to constantly "manage" their storage. 1tb is not much for next gen games.</p>
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sammyg
Log in to Reply<p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">External USB 3.0 storage can also be used, but Microsoft isn’t allowing gamers to run next-gen titles from those types of drives."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This is the weakest point of the new consoles. Especially when you take into context that games like the latest COD use 200gigs of disk space. The games are not going to get smaller. On my Xbox One X I have a 2TB Samsung T5 that not only store games on but run them from. It made a big difference from the internal spinning drive.</span></p><p><br></p><p>Hopefully over time they will make these not only bigger but cheaper, because swapping out games will suck.</p>
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erichk
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>I've been waiting for info about these things. I have an external USB drive to supplement what will come on my Series S, but ultimately I'd like to get one of these expansion cards too.</p>
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JacobTheDev
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>More pricey than I expected, I was thinking this would be around $100. At least you can still store games on external and move them over when you want to play. Not quite as good as just having more storage, but it'll do…</p>
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SWCetacean
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578584">In reply to Jacob-Bearce:</a></em></blockquote><p>$100 for 1 TB is unreasonable, especially for a PCIE 4.0 drive. The cheapest I could find a 1 TB PCIE 4 SSD on Amazon was around $180, with most of them being around $200, and that's using the regular M.2 2280 form factor. Considering this one is using the proprietary form factor (though based on CFExpress I've read), $220 is a pretty fair price for this type of storage.</p>
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GetEdumated
Log in to Reply<p>It seems to me that it would be more important to have a larger drive in the S model since it is digital only. It baffles me that they chose to put a 500GB in that model but have a 1TB drive in the disc model.</p><p><br></p><p>I get that they were targeting a lower price point but everyone who picks up an S model will have to spend an extra $220 to store more than a handful of games on it.</p>
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Michael Sorrentino
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578913">In reply to GetEdumated:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think you just answered your own question. Money, always about the money.</p>
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thretosix
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578913">In reply to GetEdumated:</a></em></blockquote><p>The Series S is supposed to have smaller installs than the Series X. Not all games are 150GB-180GB. You can also store games on an external drive. It's also very unlikely people are playing 15 games at one time.</p>
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pixymisa
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578913">In reply to GetEdumated:</a></em></blockquote><p>They're not going to put a $220 SSD in a $299 console.</p>
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melektaus
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#579006">In reply to PixyMisa:</a></em></blockquote><p>It's frankly amazing to me that they have (effectively) put a $220 drive in a $499 console.</p>
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Elan Gabriel
Log in to Reply<p>Yay, nothing like micro-manage your devices all the time by re-download/copy from another drives!</p>
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thretosix
Log in to Reply<blockquote><em><a href="#578915">In reply to egab:</a></em></blockquote><p>How is this any different than PC? I'm frequently moving my PC game titles on and off my M.2 to a HDD storage drive that I play and have in reserve. At least this is to a separate M.2 that is easily removable as well. I'm not sure I get your comment to be honest.</p>
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kenosando
Premium MemberLog in to Reply<p>Pricey, but for what you are getting (extending internal storage with little to no performance degradation when running software), it would be worth it. I would not be surprised if Microsoft added a few more manufacturers to the list, or even offering intermediary sizes (between 120 and 500 GB and between 500 GB and 1 TB). It would definitely come in handy storing titles like Forza or Call of Duty.</p>
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remc86007
Log in to Reply<p>I'll be waiting to buy one of these till the capacity goes way up and the price goes down. I'll suffer with moving games between my external and the SSD for now. It would be cool if the Series X/S (or the game devs) could identify what data needs to actually have low latency access and what can be in slow storage that way the actual footprint of games on the SSD would be smaller. I see no reason why the often 10+ gigabyte sound file libraries of games need to be taking up SSD space.</p>
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waethorn
Log in to Reply<p>Isn't PCIe 4.0 x2 the same speed as PCIe 3.0 x4?</p>
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waethorn
Log in to Reply<p>Checking on Newegg (US), this is approximately the same price as a Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB, which is PCIe 4.0 x4. A FireCuda 510 is cheaper, and the PCIe 3.0 x4 Barracuda 510 is even cheaper still.</p>
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thretosix
Log in to Reply<p>When you consider Game Pass allowing all those games to download and play I can see these getting filled up fast. While it seems expensive it is somewhat reasonable. I'm personally on the fence with these cards at the moment. </p>
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scovious
Log in to Reply<p>It's more likely for these memory cards to drop in price than it is for the cost of other components of the console, so if you can afford to wait a year or two you could probably save a bit. The long term savings in SSD cost might be the only realistic way to drop the price of the console since RAM and SOC savings aren't what they used to be.</p><p><br></p><p>At least Xbox owners don't lose their provided internal storage space when upgrading their storage. The same can not be said for the PS5.</p><p><br></p><p>I wonder how long it takes to transfer an archived Series X game off a USB 3.0 drive into the internal storage, rather than redownloading it from scratch?</p>
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codymesh
Log in to Reply<p>why not offer a 500gb expansion?</p>