"The Xbox One hard drive upgrade guide. Digital Foundry on the best value and performance storage upgrades." -
Xbox One external storage - the Digital Foundry verdict
With more titles weighing in between 40-50GB the ability to finally plug in an external storage unit is a welcome addition, and the way Microsoft has integrated this into the Xbox One OS is well thought out, with content seamlessly accessible across all drives without undue hassle once files have been transferred or re-downloaded. Clearly the use of external storage devices is designed to work as an extension to the core Xbox One library, and in that respect we encountered no unexpected functionality issues after repeatedly transferring our content between drives. It's also possible to store games across multiple drives too, simply plugging them back in when required - in effect you can back-up titles to external storage and plug them in as needed. Microsoft's external storage solution is admittedly a bit more untidy than simply installing a new hard drive into the console, but on the plus side you don't need to re-download all of your games again - a bonus in the age of the 50GB blockbuster.
There's also the fact that each and every upgrade option we tried offers generally better performance than the stock drive - even our cheap and cheerful 2TB Toshiba. Some might find this surprising - after all, you'd expect the console's internal SATA connection to offer improved performance over USB. Well, we can only speculate, but we suspect that running the OS in the background in addition to recording off the gameplay stream has an impact on bandwidth, and that's something an external unit doesn't need to deal with.
Indeed, the USB 3.0 connection clearly has enough bandwidth to accommodate fast drives such as SSDs and hybrid SSHD storage devices, although right now it's clear that games don't really benefit from a boost in speed as much as some PS3 games (such as Gran Turismo 5 or Rage) did in the past. Indeed, the overall conclusion we draw is that there's little point exploring exotic options like solid-state storage, hybrid drives or faster mechanical drives at this point in time. There's no real advantage to doing so, and no revelatory increase to game performance or any truly game-changing decreases to loading times. SSD offers some small loading time advantages but nothing really worth the exorbitant prices, while the performance uptick offered - in theory - by a faster mechanical drive, or a hybrid, mostly failed to materialise. Once again, improvements we did see in streaming-intensive titles just don't justify the additional cost of a solid state or hybrid solution.
In essence, the results are much the same as our recent PlayStation 4 hard drive upgrade testing - any purchasing decision should be dictated by how much money you're paying per gigabyte as opposed to performance considerations. Time and time again, our value £69.99 USB 3.0 passport drive kept up admirably with the pricier, more exotic storage options during our testing, despite its spec deficiencies. That's good news for your wallet, though the hardcore may feel some lingering disappointment that the one upgradable element of the new Microsoft console doesn't offer any palpable improvements over the cheap and cheerful option.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... rade-guide