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[SenjutsuSage]

I just bought my 3rd one of these. Bought two before launch and finally panic purchased a 3rd from Amazon after hearing murmurs they might become increasingly rare to get your hands on, at least in the short term. The ultimate goal in getting so many was I wanted to be able to as conveniently as possible move around with as many ready to play Series X|S titles as possible without re-downloading. Plus they kinda remind me of back in the day when I carried around PS1/PS2 or Dreamcast memory cards.

It arrived a day early.

I hadn't used a single one of these things because I felt there was no immediate need to do so. Had plenty of space I felt, and plus my 4TB USB external was amazing for transfer speeds. I was moving stuff back and forth way quicker than I thought I would be able to 9-15+ minutes, which made me think I definitely don't really need to immediately crack open any of the expansion cards yet. My motivation for checking into this now is largely because of the recent attention the subject has gotten with the big PS5 update and seeing some streamers and DF do some of their own tests moving stuff back and forth. I don't know and I haven't really checked if I've seen anyone perform a direct transfer between the Series X internal and the official Seagate expansion card, so I tried it myself just now and holy fucking shit. Results are in the title. Less than 2 minutes!

Can't just be the raw speed is my thinking, so they're probably utilizing some kind of real-time compression/decompression to speed things up at the system level. Anybody that copies stuff from one drive to another on Series X|S will know that there is always this strange and obvious pause at the start when you choose to start copying. Maybe that right there is the triggering of a combo of real-time compression together with the decompression hardware to speed the process up, which would naturally work best between the internal and the official expansion card. Maybe the CPU is also being used too for all I know. Also, the expansion card has 118GB more space than the internal series x drive, which is nice to see.

Others with the expansion card, how you liking the speeds? How is it once it fills up more?

 

[DenchDeckard]

I have the option to pick one of these up at 179.99 and keep second guessing it. Not sure if I should grab one now or wait. They really do seem quite great and the hot swap option is awesome.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I was looking at getting this, but feel fine with a big external hdd for cold storage and just moving things over when I want to play. It’s still faster than downloading again.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I have the option to pick one of these up at 179.99 and keep second guessing it. Not sure if I should grab one now or wait

Don't wait! If I knew they performed like this with data at this size I would have been using them from day one. I didn't mind my previous speeds before using my 4TB external, but it's harder to go back now.

 

[JORMBO]

I have the option to pick one of these up at 179.99 and keep second guessing it. Not sure if I should grab one now or wait. They really do seem quite great and the hot swap option is awesome.

That’s a good price for it. I paid $220 for mine a few months ago. It’s nice having all my games on SSDs.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I was looking at getting this, but feel fine with a big external hdd for cold storage and just moving things over when I want to play. It’s still faster than downloading again.

Yea, it's definitely not a must and usually faster than downloading again. Then again, my connection speed makes it plenty possible to still beat transfer from a USB external, but if there's no need to download again I guess why bother.

 

[Kilau]

Every drive that’s ever failed on me has been a seagate.

So I’m just waiting for MS to give us another option and hopefully 2TB before I get one. Using 2TB SSDs for PS5 and XSX has worked fine so far but it’s good to know the speed is there when I do get one.

 

[Iced Arcade]

Yeah, they are great. I just can't justify paying that price for one ($345 CDN after-tax here)

 

[DenchDeckard]

I think that's the only thing putting me off, the price. Even at 179.99 I feel like I might be able to wait and get a 2tb option closer to Xmas.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Every drive that’s ever failed on me has been a seagate.

So I’m just waiting for MS to give us another option and hopefully 2TB before I get one. Using 2TB SSDs for PS5 and XSX has worked fine so far but it’s good to know the speed is there when I do get one.

Same for me. Every drive that has ever failed on me has been a seagate, but then this was also back when I was using a Geforce 3 Ti 500 in my PC to play Max Payne I think lol.

 

[SGRU]

Seagate? No, thanks.

Besides, download and install speeds are great, so I don't need more storage at this moment. If I fill up my disk, I can just delete a game and download it again in a matter of minutes.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I think that's the only thing putting me off, the price. Even at 179.99 I feel like I might be able to wait and get a 2tb option closer to Xmas.

Yea, the price is definitely a bitch. I actually paid more for this drive off Amazon than I spent for my main PC SSD off newegg.

And for the record, I get it to EASILY exceed these speeds when I give it access to just 8GB of my PC's 64GB for use as a cache.

 

[Kilau]

Same for me. Every drive that has ever failed on me has been a seagate, but then this was also back when I was using a Geforce 3 Ti 500 in my PC to play Max Payne I think lol.

Haha, my most recent was last year, a 2TB SSHD from them shit the bed. Was hardly used too. I know the overall failure rate for them isn’t far off the other manufacturers but they’ve burned me too many times.

 

[Rossco EZ]

i want one but feel like they are too expensive atm, i’ll probably bite if they ever go down to £130-£140 ish.

also holy shit at buying 3

 

[SenjutsuSage]

i want one but feel like they are too expensive atm, i’ll probably bite if they ever go down to £130-£140 ish.

also holy shit at buying 3

Yea, 3 was no doubt overkill, but I always go nuts for my gaming habit lol. Can be more conservative at times, but then I'll overdo that so much to the extreme that I use the money on less important things that could've been used on my favorite hobby.

 

[off duty ninja]

I bought one for my series s and although expensive, it is ridiculous how much faster these drives make everything. I recently got a ps5 too and I think the series s loads things faster that the ps5 generally but I don’t have many duplicate games to test. Miles morales and demons souls load up super fast but everything else, while fast, doesn’t feel as fast as the xss.

I don’t own a 4K tv so graphically I don’t benefit from those aspects of next gen. Playing last gen games at 60fps on xss is amazing. Same goes for the ps4 games that got patched.

Hopefully this drive tech will start dropping in price now that it’s really becoming mainstream. It hurt to spend almost as much on the card as my xss altogether but I didn’t need an xsx so it still feels worth it.

 

[Spukc]

you do you op
but spending that cash for 1tb is a fucking scam

 

[Rossco EZ]

Yea, 3 was no doubt overkill, but I always go nuts for my gaming habit lol. Can be more conservative at times, but then I'll overdo that so much to the extreme that I use the money on less important things that could've been used on my favorite hobby.

if you can afford it and have the games to fill them up then why not

i just use one of these currently (500GB Seagate external SSD)

it does the job, i guess when more games come out and require fast speeds like the internal then those drives will be needed for sure!

 

[SenjutsuSage]

you do you op
but spending that cash for 1tb is a fucking scam

It's definitely not for everybody at that crazy price, but if I spent it on my PC, then my Series X is equally deserving lol. I'm more or less set for space this gen.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

if you can afford it and have the games to fill them up then why not

i just use one of these currently (500GB Seagate external SSD)

it does the job, i guess when more games come out and require fast speeds like the internal then those drives will be needed for sure!

I definitely considered a few along these lines, but I figured with the stuff I spend money on that after spending all that money I could look back and said, look how much I spent, i coulda simply just got the expansion cards for this much money. Plus with me dieting and not ordering out as much, that too frees up hundreds of dollars per month lol.

 

[Maximus D. Meridius]

I've already filled the internal, and the expansion that I bought 2 months ago, with games that are series X enhanced.

even though I'm not playing all these games concurrently, it nice to have them available. that's how they get you.

 

[Rossco EZ]

oh for sure, if i didn’t have this one and i was going to buy more storage i’d go for those ones definitely, i often see deals posted for the drives for around £170 if buying from german or france amazon sites but yeah just waiting for it to go lower. & haha damn you must have been ordering out a lot if you are saving that much!

have you tested how long something like Halo master chief collection takes to transfer or maybe warzone with all installable content? and do they get hot?

 

[RoadHazard]

I mean, 93 GB in 2 minutes is about 794 MB/s. Not that impressive. If that's what this thread is about.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I mean, 93 GB in 2 minutes is about 794 MB/s. Not that impressive. If that's what this thread is about.

Shit, when you say it like that you really do make it sound a lot less impressive lol, but 93GB from game ready storage to game ready storage in under 2 minutes is pretty damn crazy from a sustained performance standpoint.

I don't have warzone installed, but I'll go ahead and install it. Plus, I'll do the Master Chief Collection test right now. Just taking the 66GB update it requires first.

 

[RPS37]

Gimme a 2TB for 250.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

I luv it only use one at the moment but like the fact that I can have and swap out multiple cards.

 

[ManaByte]

Gimme a 2TB for 250.

2TB NMve drives are more than the cost of a Series S or PS5 digital.

 

[RPS37]

2TB NMve drives are more than the cost of a Series S or PS5 digital.

A boy can dream.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

These go for about $300 cdn. Forget it.

Maybe years later if it comes down to $100.

 

[TLZ]

Yeah, they are great. I just can't justify paying that price for one ($345 CDN after-tax here)

Yes. Can't justify it at all. I'd rather get another console or other stuff.

 

[Derktron]

I really want to get it but at that price. I rather do what I’m doing now.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

oh for sure, if i didn’t have this one and i was going to buy more storage i’d go for those ones definitely, i often see deals posted for the drives for around £170 if buying from german or france amazon sites but yeah just waiting for it to go lower. & haha damn you must have been ordering out a lot if you are saving that much!

have you tested how long something like Halo master chief collection takes to transfer or maybe warzone with all installable content? and do they get hot?

Master Chief Collection at 130GB took 3 minutes on the dot to transfer from internal (95% filled at the time) to the official 1TB expansion card. Ran a stop watch also to be exact.


Also did a video, but I was already at the 18.50GB transferred mark when I started, so the remainder of the total 130.05GB took 2 minutes and 39 seconds. Stop watch, which I started exactly at the moment the transfer process began, says the time was exactly 3 minutes.

 

[Rossco EZ]

Master Chief Collection at 130GB took 3 minutes on the dot to transfer from internal (95% filled at the time) to the official 1TB expansion card. Ran a stop watch also to be exact.

damn pretty quick then, i’m guessing modern warfare with warzone and all other add ons installed would be around the 6 minute mark then as that was around 250GB last time i had it installed, no idea of it has increased in size since then though. how hot was it after transferring halo?

 

[SenjutsuSage]

damn pretty quick then, i’m guessing modern warfare with warzone and all other add ons installed would be around the 6 minute mark then as that was around 250GB last time i had it installed, no idea of it has increased in size since then though. how hot was it after transferring halo?

While it's inside the console, the temperature feels no different from when I first took it out the box. It's literally that cool there. Maybe if I yanked it out and felt the part that was inserted into the console port it might feel hot, but I detect no heat in the area by sticking my hand back there and directly touching the expansion card. Very cool to the touch.

 

[Fafalada]

93GB from game ready storage to game ready storage in under 2 minutes is pretty damn crazy from a sustained performance standpoint.

Well it's within hw-specs (2.4GB raw read, some lower number raw-write) - and moving between two drives you get full utilization on both sides.
On the fly compression wouldn't really do much since you're moving data that is mostly already compressed.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

I get something like 400 Mbps download speed on an average day so I don't really need one of these cards yet.

Even downloading 93 gb doesn't take that long (around half an hour).

 

[Jaysen]

Gimme a 2TB for 250.

Gimme the time machine to transport me to the future where this makes sense.

 

[BlackTron]

I'm all for buying whatever you want at any price, but I don't get buying a third one when you haven't even plugged in and used the two you have yet. At that price, I'm totally baffled.

 

[captainraincoat]

Great card and it takes the annoying juggling I have to do with my ps5 as it’s out of space

the cards also also hot swap so if you store other games on one card you can just plug and play

 

[Hoddi]

Gimme the time machine to transport me to the future where this makes sense.

2TB NVMe drives are already available for $250. I bought the previous gen Intel 660p for about $180 almost two years ago.

 

[Jaysen]

2TB NVMe drives are already available for $250. I bought the previous gen Intel 660p for about $180 almost two years ago.

Not ones that connect externally like this and are easily transferable to any Xbox X you want.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I'm all for buying whatever you want at any price, but I don't get buying a third one when you haven't even plugged in and used the two you have yet. At that price, I'm totally baffled.

Had extra money on hand, didn't want to risk losing out on them prior to launch if they were really hard to find. Set them aside for a bit till I finally got hands on a Series X sometime in December. Was surprised at the setup process and how quick transfers were between the internal and my 4TB USB 3.0 external, so didn't feel an immediate need for it, and so comfortably gamed without any of the expansion cards because I really didn't need it. Fast forward to now with a 95% filled internal drive, and I've been doing transfers more often, I suddenly now started thinking about faster alternatives to my 4TB external. Was going to pull the trigger on a 8TB drive, decided not to, then bam!

PS5 update brings the subject back into the spotlight and now I'm considering more strongly to go with a fast external SSD. Started watching some youtube vids of people doing transfers with their PS5, saw DF's video and article, so the desire to do faster copies is now a much bigger deal whereas before I was only concerned with pure size. Saw the expansion cards were going fast and becoming harder to find, so I pounced.

So with internal and these 3 expansion cards, I basically have 4TB of storage that's capable of running Series X titles. Swapping the cards in and out as necessary will be a relatively easy task since it's so convenient, and they don't need to be formatted. The moment you slot them in they're already ready for the Series X.

 

[oldergamer]

I've had this expansion drive since launch. You can't beat having 2TB of storage for games.

 

[noise36]

Nah just delete and download again if required.

 

[Hoddi]

Not ones that connect externally like this and are easily transferable to any Xbox X you want.

Changing the connector isn't going to double the price. The far biggest cost factor in any SSD is the number of flash dies on it and these Intel drives both have twice the amount of the Xbox drive.

It's the same reason why TLC and QLC drives are less expensive than SLC drives. It's because they have fewer chips.

 

[Chronos24]

Where can you get the drive for that price?

 

[Fox Mulder]

Yea, it's definitely not a must and usually faster than downloading again. Then again, my connection speed makes it plenty possible to still beat transfer from a USB external, but if there's no need to download again I guess why bother.

nice. I pay $100 a month for half that speed.

 

[InfiniteUnrest]

Hot swap is not convenient at all for those of us with our console in an entertainment center. Maybe they should have put the slot on the front.

 

[BlackTron]

expansion cards were going fast and becoming harder to find, so I pounced.

I guess I'm just surprised that you were worried that cards would be scarce when you really need one, while you hadn't even begun to use any you already had yet. I mean, that scenario would seem pretty safely down the line to me, but what do I know

Edit: To be fair. I remember when I got an N64 memory card even though I didn't have a game that could use it yet. I also got an extra controller even though there wasn't even a 2 player game to buy. We gamers are some depraved folk.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Hot swap is not convenient at all for those of us with our console in an entertainment center. Maybe they should have put the slot on the front.

Yea, my Xbox is in a nice, accessible spot. If I didn't like looking at it I might actually turn it to the side to make hot swapping even easier, but I gotta see the front of the console.