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The Microsoft Xbox One($200.00 at eBay)(Opens in a new window) comes with a 500GB hard drive, but that’s all you get for storage. That’s a problem when every major Xbox One game is available for download, and even disc-based games install gigabytes worth of data on the Xbox One just to run. Fortunately, Microsoft has added external storage support to the Xbox One, so you can just plug in a USB hard drive. Seagate’s Game Drive for Xbox ($99.99) is a black-and-green 2-terabyte hard drive that easily expands your system’s storage. It doesn’t offer anything unique or special that other drives lack, and it seems to be a re-shelled version of a slightly less expensive Seagate drive, but it’s a solid option if you want both good performance and a consistent look to your gaming set-up.
Design
The Game Drive($180.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) measures 4.6 by 3.1 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs a scant 6 ounces, giving it the same dimensions as Seagate’s Expansion Portable(Opens in a new window) external hard drive, which is, itself, very similar to the Seagate Backup Plus Slim ($179.02 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) we tested last year. Even its Seagate product ID, STEA2000403 is close to that of the 2TB Expansion Portable (STEA2000400). Basically, you’re spending an extra $10 for an Xbox logo and a color scheme that matches the console.
Setup
You’ll have to choose between using the Game Drive as a storage expansion device for Xbox One games or as a media drive. Setting up the Game Drive to store Xbox One games requires formatting it to serve as storage for just that task. After setting it up that way, we couldn’t access the storage when we plugged the Game Drive into a PC via USB (the volume was visible, but it was unmountable and unreadable by Windows).
You can also just use the Game Drive as a standard USB hard drive for storing movies and music, and play those files on the Xbox One with the Xbox One Media Player app. This will prevent you from using the Game Drive to actually store games, however, and you’ll have to tell the Xbox One not to format the drive when you plug it in.
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Thanks to the Xbox One’s external storage support, we got the Game Drive running with the system within minutes. It’s a very simple process: Plug the Game Drive in, format it to work with the Xbox One (the Xbox One will prompt you to do just that as soon as you plug it in), and give it a drive name. After that, it shows up as a storage drive, and you can install new games to it by default, or move all of your games to the drive to free up space on the console’s internal storage.
Since the Game Drive is intended primarily for the Xbox One and the Xbox 360, we won’t treat it like an external hard drive for a Mac or PC; testing transfer rates in the Xbox One operating system is more a matter of eyeballing the bar, due to the lack of formal benchmark tests. Still, I was able to copy all of the games installed on our nearly full 500GB Xbox One in around 20 minutes, thanks to the drive’s speedy USB 3.0 connection. And I could load games as quickly from the drive as the console’s internal hard drive.
Conclusion
When you get down to it, the Game Drive is just a Seagate Expansion Portable external hard drive in a color-coordinated Xbox-branded shell. If you’re willing to pay the $10 premium, it works perfectly well and will look good next to your Xbox.
3.5
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The Seagate Game Drive is just an Xbox-branded USB 3.0 hard drive, but that’s all you need to expand your Xbox One or Xbox 360’s storage.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/seagate-game-drive-for-xbox