Top Xbox One Hard Drive Upgrades: Boost Your Gaming Storage

Xbox One Overview and Size Limits

Xbox One the redesigned model of the home video game console, was released in 2016. It supports 4K video playback and HDR10 and has a smaller size than ever, an internal power supply, and up to 2TB of internal storage, including 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Even now that Xbox has launched its Xbox Series, the Xbox One console is still being used by a large number of people

But by now, the 500GB it comes with isn't enough for a game console. As games become increasingly larger, one 3A game even up to 110GB without 4k enhancements. Thus, it will be filled up quickly if you want to install several games together. And finally, you will receive a low hard disk space warning. Otherwise, you'll have to uninstall a game after you've finished it completely. This is a bit embarrassing for a professional game console.

As for general users, if they don't want to replace the hard drive or add a new SSD, they will need to uninstall the finished game to free up space, but it’s not the ideal way. You may need to do this again and again. To prevent this bad experience, the best way is to upgrade the Xbox One hard drive to a larger one, preferably an SSD disk.

Two Ways to Upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive

Speaking of this, the first thought you can consider is using cloning methods to perform an Xbox One internal hard drive or SSD upgrade. In fact, it's the best way to fix not enough space on the disk.

At the same time, Xbox One is compatible with an external hard drive and allows you to add an external hard drive of at least 256GB via USB 3.0 ports.

By comparison, the first way is better except for ultimately voiding your warranty. While the second way always carries some processing overhead and consumes a lot of CPU. Besides, the external hard drive is more vulnerable due to sudden shock or fall.

In sum, select a way depending on your needs and follow the steps in each method.

Directly Replace Xbox One Internal Hard Drive

To directly replace the Xbox One internal hard drive or SSD, you need to prepare the best Xbox One hard drive clone software - AOMEI Backupper Professional. It provides you with two ways in the following:

Disk Clone: It will clone all the games on the Xbox Onedrive and keep its original structure.
Partition Clone: It allows you to clone partitions from one hard drive to another, especially useful when cloning the Xbox One drive a new HDD, or an SSD larger than 2TB. And you need to keep the User Content partition in the end, otherwise, the system will fail to boot.

Either way, this software clones only used sectors, thus you can easily clone large drives to smaller drives or SSDs without boot issues. And more, you can accelerate the writing and reading speed of the SSD drive and its lifespan.

How to start the cloning process? First of all, download this software and install it on your new computer. For server users, try the AOMEI Backupper Server.

Then, prepare a larger HDD or SSD to upgrade the Xbox One hard drive without losing data. Connect it to your new computer and be sure it's recognized. You also need some extracting tools for removing and installing hard drives for Xbox One.

Note: Please backup the important data on the destination disk first, because all the data on the destination disk will be wiped out after the cloning.

1. Take the Xbox Onedriveout (refer to the tutorial offered by iFixit) and connect it to your computer. Select Disk Clone at the right side of the Clone tab.

Notes: The Professional version of this software supports cloning all the data disk and system disk, from MBR to MBR, MBR to GPT, GPT to GPT, and GPT to MBR. Please be sure both disks use the same disk type (MBR and MBR or GPT and GPT) if it is a system disk. If you are not clear about its disk type, please check its disk properties in Disk Management. Click the Volumes tab and see Partition style under it.

2. Choose an Xbox One hard drive to clone.

3. Select the larger HDD or SSD as the target disk to store data from the Xbox One hard drive.

4 (Optional). ClickEdit Partitions to resize partitions and avoid unallocated space. You can also convert disk types (MBR and GPT) with it. It requires an upgrade to the professional edition first.

• Copy without resizing partitions: It will not resize the partition size.
• Add unused space to all partitions: It will reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk, appropriate for the disk size.
• Manually adjust partition size: It allows you to extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want.
• Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT: It helps to convert the partition style of the destination disk if it is different from the source disk and ensures a secure boot while cloning GPT to MBR or vice versa.

Note: The"Sector by sector clone" option makes the Edit Partition unavailable. If the target disk is larger than or equal to the source, don't use it unless you want to clone all sectors of it.

5. Check the "SSD Alignment" option the boost SSD disk performance. Then, press Start Clone to upgrade the Xbox One hard drive.

After cloning, switch out the Xbox One hard drive and install the larger HDD or SSD onto the Xbox One console, then you will find that there is more free space to store data on the Xbox One. The above steps also applied to the Xbox OneSSD upgrade.

Besides cloning, this software is still a backup and restore software for Windows 7/8/10/11/XP/Vista. With it, you could back up your Xbox One hard drive, and then restore data to another hard disk. The entire process can be an alternative to the cloning operations.

Xbox One Hard Drive Upgrade by External Hard Drive

1. Connect the prepared external hard drive to the Xbox One and make sure it can be recognized. Then, go to Settings > System > Storage.

Next, you will see the internal and external drives here.

2. Select the external drive, scroll down to the option “Format” and select “Format storage device”.

3. Completely shut down your computer and restart.

4. Move games and apps. Launch “My Games & Apps”, select the installed games from the internal drive, press the “Menu” button on the controller, then click “Manage Game” > “Move all” or “Move” to start the migration process.

Now, it will work as smoothly as before. If you want a better performance or have more budget, you can choose to replace the hard drive with an SSD. The above method is also applied to Xbox One internal hard drive upgrade. You just need to follow the steps and try it yourself.

FAQs About Xbox One Hard Drive Upgrades

1. How many games can a 1TB Xbox One hold?

Most Xbox One games are around 40GB to 50GB each. Given that system updates and other partitions take up about 100GB, a 1TB hard drive can store approximately 18 to 23 games of this size.

2. Will an SSD make my Xbox One faster?

Upgrading to an SSD can significantly improve your Xbox One's performance. SSDs provide faster data access, leading to quicker loading times for games and applications. It's wise to check user reviews and benchmarks to see the exact performance improvements.

3. Will an SSD improve my Xbox One?

Adding an external SSD to your Xbox One can greatly enhance game load times and overall in-game performance, providing a smoother and more responsive gaming experience.

Wrapping things up

Xbox One hard drive upgrades are the best way to fix low disk space warnings since you need more space instead of simply freeing up space. You can choose to perform an Xbox One internal hard drive or SSD upgrade or use an external drive to expand disk capacity. The previous one is recommended since external hard drives do not operate as consistently as internal hard drives, and it is vulnerable and use more CPU.

For disk cloning software, you could consider using AOMEI Backupper Professional. It can help you do an Xbox One hard drive upgrade in all situations and improve SSD disk performance. And you can easily clone larger drives to smaller drives or SSDs with its intelligent clone feature. For IT technicians, you can consider AOMEI Backupper Tech or Tech Plus. You can use it on unlimited PCs or servers.