Question What, if any, is the best external hard drive to expand storage on consoles?

[consptheory77]

I have both an Xbox One and a PS4. I've had the Xbox One since 2017, and in 2018 I went to add a desktop sized hard drive in a Sabrent Lay-Flat Docking Station, but there were always problems with it running too, running too loud, and losing the connectivity. The PS4 I got last year, at which time I replaced the standard 500 GB drive with a 2TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD with which I have had no problems.

For the Xbox One, at the same time I got another 2TB Cuda bundled with a Fantom Drives Snap-On Cases, with which I have had no problems. But after a year, it's still not enough space. Now for desktops, I rely on HGST/Hitachi. I've had Seagates fail, I've had WD fail. I've had more Seagates fail, but I've had more of them. The only WD I remember failing was what I think was a My Passport Essential circa 2012 that I bought from Target, and the drive didn't actually fail it was the housing/connection. After which I just learned to use laptop drives in HD enclosures like those made by Rocketfish.

But now there seems to be no price advantage to doing this if I go as high as 2TB and above, and I wonder if the technology has improved so that the issue I had with my failed My Passport doesn't repeat. I am considering therefore to buy some "game drives". Some of them "branded", like for Star Wars, or Halo, or Call of Duty - and yes, I know there's an upcharge for the privilege - but also more ordinary ones.

In particular, I am looking at the WD P10. But I still wonder to myself, is it safer to buy more 2TB drives or just try to buy the biggest capacity I can afford? I have heard that "the 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR". Or would I be better off putting a FireCuda SSHD in a hard drive enclosure?

 

[Ralston18]

I favor multiple smaller drives overall. Allows multiple backups to different locations/drives.

(Using almost all SSD drives now.)

Avoids/limits "all eggs in one basket"......

However, I rely much more on good backup practices - the physical hardware of any brand and model drive (as you have noted) being subject to failures.

Pricing - always trade-offs there. I generally ignore branding beyond the manufacturer's name.

Just my thoughts.

 

[consptheory77]

Since any of the drives would be used only to store games - which in case of a hard drive failure can be re-downloaded from the console's server - the risk of a data loss is not a concern. It's only a question of whether the convenience of having all the games one has purchased on hand is greater than the possible inconvenience of having to re-downloaded them due to a hard drive failure, and whether the possibility of an attenuated longevity is good economics. How long should I expect a drive to last? Will the company honor the warranty if it doesn't? SSDs are simply too expensive for the number of games I have. Yes, I was thinking the same thing, putting my "eggs" (games) in many baskets.

 

[consptheory77]

and the other thing I'm thinking about is to eschew the Type A to Micro-B USB cable these manufacturers include with their external drives for a third-party one. One reviewer observed that with the Toshiba drive they bought, the included cable gave them a 15MBs transfer rate whereas the third party cable gave them 100 MBs

 

[Deleted member 14196]

SSD are best as external drives for consoles. They are the fastest and most reliable and longest lasting

I currently use a crucial P5 NVme on Xbox one and Series X. They are lightning fast games load much quicker. Loading times in red dead two are extremely shortened by using an SSD

 

[consptheory77]

I currently use a crucial P5 NVme on Xbox one and Series X.

I have just an Xbox One, not the S or X series. I don't think you can add an NVme to the original version of the console? Or perhaps I'm wrong. But the object of the upgrade would not be the speed of loading screens, rather the storage of all purchased games.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

You put it in an enclosure usb

I don’t install any drives into the unit itself

You can also use a 2 1/2 inch SSD in an enclosure

 

[consptheory77]

Well, I embarked on the project to expand my storage. I bought a 2TB WD external drive for the PS4, with which so far I have had no problems. I bought four 2TB Seagate external drives for the Xbox One - and in between buying the first two and the last two, lo and behold, the Xbox One internal hard drive failed (lol) so it took me a week to order the special screwdrivers/figure out how to take it apart/figure out how to reload the X1 OS - and now that this has been done the latter two Seagates have both failed on me. Now is that amazing coincidence, a statistical probability, or did I cause or contribute to the failure of both of these drives because I set them on top of the X1's exhaust fan - not, mind you, when I was playing a game and the exhaust might clock in at 50C, but just when I was downloading games onto the drive itself. The other two drives that continue to work were only placed on the flat side of the X1, the two that failed had only been placed on the exhaust side. Xbox won't recognize them, and the hard drive light doesn't go on. I could feel and hear the drives spinning, so I plugged them into the desktop computer to wipe and reinitialize them (sometimes that works whenever a drive gets corrupted) but in both instances I got “The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error”. I tried different USB ports and cables as well in case that was the problem, but I got the same result with every one I tried.

I simply cannot afford to catalog all my games on a SSD, but I am thinking of buying a 1TB SSD to port over whatever "modern" (i.e., post-2014) open world games I plan to play at a given time.