So what does this thing do that a regular external SSD doesn't? Or are they just slapping "XBOX" on the case so that they can charge $20-30 extra for having some text on the case that you'll never see?
Probably comes pre-formatted for Xbox instead of needing to be formatted like a normal external drive. Other than that you're paying for the aluminum case and XBOX logo.
The author mentioned compatibility so there must be something within the PS4/XBONE OS that needs "talking to" to ensure they work together. In other words, an artificial limited in place to force the customer to pay more for the same. Gee thanks Sony/Microsoft.
I use a 500GB Seagate SSHD with my XBOX One and it's noticeably faster than the 500GB WD Blue HDD it replaced, and I'm pretty sure it's only 5400RPM. Surprising how much that 8GB NAND buffer helps.
I used a 7200RPM/4GB/32MB Seagate hybrid drive for years as a main drive, in my last system, and yeah, it did really help. At least on mine it cached frequently used files <64MB, if I'm remembering right.
That's an interesting question...seems like it's actually not outside the realm of possibility.
I threw an SSD in my Playstation 3 years ago, and made sure I got something that handled not having TRIM well. Got I think a third gen Intel drive (one with a real Intel controller) and never had issues.
It's more than likely going to be a driver limitation than an OS limitation.
TRIM can only be sent over UASP via a USB host. XBOX One uses BOT for USB connections; the embedded chipset USB controller doesn't support UASP at the hardware level...that generation of AMD chipsets the APU was based around were pretty terrible USB performers.
AMD USB controllers have historically lagged behind most others. If Microsoft cared about USB performance (they never will) a $2 Asmedia host controller would have been added to the BOM.
It's probably worth pointing out the elephant in the room at this point. The PS4, as did the PS3 as confirmed by GeoHot, can send TRIM via their SATA connection. This shouldn't be a surprise but its worth mentioning because it might mean the SATA controller on the XBOX One does as well.
But that's moot because Microsoft won't let you upgrade the internal disk. Years ago I hacked a 120GB 2.5" WD's boot record to install in my XBOX 360 Arcade (which didn't come with a hard disk at all) and all was well until it was banned. Didn't even modify anything in the console.
Obviously I haven't owned a single Microsoft product since.
Oh look, now we can get headaches from Shitgate reliability with our Xbox too! Wonder if they'd charge the same $1000+ tax for recovering data off of this drive. What am I saying...of course they will, it's just that people (hopefully) don't store truly important data on their Xbox consoles.
Been using Seagate for decades, and never once had a single issue. Currently running a DatOptic 12 bay thunderbolt raid box w/ 12 seagate HDD's for a long time.
Been using 1tb 7200rpm HGST drives in ps3 and ps4, user replaceable so a cheap upgrade for more space plus speed. The benchmarks for loading ect show a decent difference from 5400rpm stock drive but only a small boost going from 7200rpm to ssd. I think ps3 used sata 1 which maxed out at 150mbs if I remember correct.
Well. The Xbox 360 is limited by USB 2.0 anyway, so the benefits of an SSD is pretty much wasted for the most part.
On the Xbox One, 512Gb isn't enough storage, I have 3.5 Terabytes all up and already 60% full... And we are only roughly half/third of the way through the console generation!
With some games taking up almost 100Gb by themselves, you are better off with larger mechanical storage, you still see performance gains over the slow 500Gb 5400rpm drives too.
It's also a Seagate... And I would rather drink Metho' than use a Seagate drive ever again.
512GB is plenty. Just put the games you are currently playing or frequently play on the SSD so they have fast load times, and keep the ones you aren't playing on your HDD for storage.
Why waste time manually transferring 50-100Gb of data when you could have it all in one place? The SSD doesn't provide THAT big of a benefit to warrant such an expense and inconvenience.
Besides, have you ever had the urge to pop in an old game and fire it up after a few years? Well. I can do that with every game I own. No transferring, installing or updating required, it's all there with just the push of a button.
"Why waste time manually transferring 50-100Gb of data when you could have it all in one place?"
Because in the end it saves more time to transfer it over to the SSD. I transferred Forza 6 to my SSD. Sure it took a few minutes to copy over, but within 3 or 4 races I had already made up that time with the decreased load times, and by now I've probably saved over an hour of waiting for loading screens just in Forza.
It would take almost 10 minuets to transfer 50GB of data at 100MB/s. (You are limited by the internal Mechanical disk remember!)
On a SSHD you are looking at a load time of around 36 seconds. On an SSD you are looking at a load time of around 27 seconds. (Just from various web comparisons.)
So 3 or 4 races to make up that time? NOPE. You would need to do about 62 races to equalize everything... There are also mechanical drives faster than an SSHD too.
I would rather have everything there at a single push of a button rather than shuffling everything around. It's simply far more convenient.
Also some games don't seem to benefit as much as others in regards to load times, so the entire process can be completely and utterly pointless. Just a waste of time and money.
Oh, so you have first hand experience copying Forza over to an SSD? I timed it and it cuts ~10 seconds off of every single loading screen. That means when I boot up the game I save 10 seconds, when I go from the menu to a race I save 10 seconds, and when I go from a race back to the menu I save another 10 seconds. So with booting up the game and 1 race I save 30 seconds. Add it up. It makes up the time very quickly.
And also, it takes very little effort to shuffle everything around. Before I play a game I know I'm going to be playing for a while I just copy it over to the SSD. If I need to make more space I simply delete the game from my SSD, and it's still on my Console's HDD anyways. It still shows up in my game library the same way whether it's on the HDD or SSD. You make it seem like it's so difficult when it's extremely simple. Maybe you just aren't intelligent enough to handle an SSD on your Xbox.
The best external drive that I've seen is using the "Collective Minds Media Hub" with a Samsung 850 Pro (or whatever 2.5" drive)..it matches the xbox perfectly and works well and most important adds a few usb ports in the front for temporarily adding a keyboard etc.
A bit disappointing that the PS4 Pro doesn't have USB 3.1 support, although Sony's policy against external drives would make it moot. I'd really hope Project Scorpio, especially with its much later launch date, does incorporate the 10 Gb connection. My tests with a USB 3.1 to SATA enclosure connecting to a system with a PCIe SSD show it was able to completely saturate the SATA bus for 600 MB/s reads. A console loading to RAM should be able to do the same much of the time and by the time Scorpio is a shipping product, native USB 3.1 SSDs might be in the market or it may be practical to use PCIe M.2 devices over a single lane to USB 3.1 to get a good bit closer to the USB 3.1 upper limit.
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
"Xbox 350" typo in the first sentence. :)XabanakFanatik - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
It's the new budget Xbox, 10 less than the 360!Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
I admit, I googled Xbox 350.Guspaz - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
So what does this thing do that a regular external SSD doesn't? Or are they just slapping "XBOX" on the case so that they can charge $20-30 extra for having some text on the case that you'll never see?takeshi7 - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Official licensing/certification costs money.WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Probably comes pre-formatted for Xbox instead of needing to be formatted like a normal external drive. Other than that you're paying for the aluminum case and XBOX logo.fanofanand - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
The author mentioned compatibility so there must be something within the PS4/XBONE OS that needs "talking to" to ensure they work together. In other words, an artificial limited in place to force the customer to pay more for the same. Gee thanks Sony/Microsoft.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
PS3 and 4 support normal notebook drives.360/One support normal drives, but only externally.
takeshi7 - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Since the Xbox 360 is only USB 2.0 I really doubt they expect people to use this SSD with Xbox 360, even though it's technically compatible.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Well, depending on how much a game has to seek around, and SSD might not be able to saturate USB 2.0, so it might be beneficial.fanofanand - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Awfully pricey for how few games you can store on it.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
You'll pay for it and like it in just the same way you should have paid for an liked mandatory Kinect.Samus - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
I use a 500GB Seagate SSHD with my XBOX One and it's noticeably faster than the 500GB WD Blue HDD it replaced, and I'm pretty sure it's only 5400RPM. Surprising how much that 8GB NAND buffer helps.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
I used a 7200RPM/4GB/32MB Seagate hybrid drive for years as a main drive, in my last system, and yeah, it did really help. At least on mine it cached frequently used files <64MB, if I'm remembering right.jahara21 - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
So, now that Xbox One uses Windows 10, does it support TRIM as well? Because, if not, this thing is going to slow way down pretty fast.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
That's an interesting question...seems like it's actually not outside the realm of possibility.I threw an SSD in my Playstation 3 years ago, and made sure I got something that handled not having TRIM well. Got I think a third gen Intel drive (one with a real Intel controller) and never had issues.
Samus - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
It's more than likely going to be a driver limitation than an OS limitation.TRIM can only be sent over UASP via a USB host. XBOX One uses BOT for USB connections; the embedded chipset USB controller doesn't support UASP at the hardware level...that generation of AMD chipsets the APU was based around were pretty terrible USB performers.
AMD USB controllers have historically lagged behind most others. If Microsoft cared about USB performance (they never will) a $2 Asmedia host controller would have been added to the BOM.
It's probably worth pointing out the elephant in the room at this point. The PS4, as did the PS3 as confirmed by GeoHot, can send TRIM via their SATA connection. This shouldn't be a surprise but its worth mentioning because it might mean the SATA controller on the XBOX One does as well.
But that's moot because Microsoft won't let you upgrade the internal disk. Years ago I hacked a 120GB 2.5" WD's boot record to install in my XBOX 360 Arcade (which didn't come with a hard disk at all) and all was well until it was banned. Didn't even modify anything in the console.
Obviously I haven't owned a single Microsoft product since.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Wish Microsoft would update the design of the One so it supported user replaceable hard drives.This article makes it sound like a One will boot even if the internal drive is dead though?
vaporcobra - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
lol, a 1 year warranty on an SSD. Translation: avoid at all costs unless you do not care about your money or data.3ogdy - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Oh look, now we can get headaches from Shitgate reliability with our Xbox too! Wonder if they'd charge the same $1000+ tax for recovering data off of this drive. What am I saying...of course they will, it's just that people (hopefully) don't store truly important data on their Xbox consoles.ruthan - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
If it would be internal im in, but who like 1 more cable and data migration managment between normal and external drive?Chad - Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - link
Been using Seagate for decades, and never once had a single issue. Currently running a DatOptic 12 bay thunderbolt raid box w/ 12 seagate HDD's for a long time.aj654987 - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
Been using 1tb 7200rpm HGST drives in ps3 and ps4, user replaceable so a cheap upgrade for more space plus speed. The benchmarks for loading ect show a decent difference from 5400rpm stock drive but only a small boost going from 7200rpm to ssd. I think ps3 used sata 1 which maxed out at 150mbs if I remember correct.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
Well. The Xbox 360 is limited by USB 2.0 anyway, so the benefits of an SSD is pretty much wasted for the most part.On the Xbox One, 512Gb isn't enough storage, I have 3.5 Terabytes all up and already 60% full... And we are only roughly half/third of the way through the console generation!
With some games taking up almost 100Gb by themselves, you are better off with larger mechanical storage, you still see performance gains over the slow 500Gb 5400rpm drives too.
It's also a Seagate... And I would rather drink Metho' than use a Seagate drive ever again.
takeshi7 - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
512GB is plenty. Just put the games you are currently playing or frequently play on the SSD so they have fast load times, and keep the ones you aren't playing on your HDD for storage.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
Why waste time manually transferring 50-100Gb of data when you could have it all in one place? The SSD doesn't provide THAT big of a benefit to warrant such an expense and inconvenience.Besides, have you ever had the urge to pop in an old game and fire it up after a few years? Well. I can do that with every game I own. No transferring, installing or updating required, it's all there with just the push of a button.
takeshi7 - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
"Why waste time manually transferring 50-100Gb of data when you could have it all in one place?"Because in the end it saves more time to transfer it over to the SSD. I transferred Forza 6 to my SSD. Sure it took a few minutes to copy over, but within 3 or 4 races I had already made up that time with the decreased load times, and by now I've probably saved over an hour of waiting for loading screens just in Forza.
StevoLincolnite - Friday, November 4, 2016 - link
It would take almost 10 minuets to transfer 50GB of data at 100MB/s. (You are limited by the internal Mechanical disk remember!)On a SSHD you are looking at a load time of around 36 seconds.
On an SSD you are looking at a load time of around 27 seconds.
(Just from various web comparisons.)
So 3 or 4 races to make up that time? NOPE.
You would need to do about 62 races to equalize everything... There are also mechanical drives faster than an SSHD too.
I would rather have everything there at a single push of a button rather than shuffling everything around. It's simply far more convenient.
Also some games don't seem to benefit as much as others in regards to load times, so the entire process can be completely and utterly pointless. Just a waste of time and money.
takeshi7 - Friday, November 4, 2016 - link
Oh, so you have first hand experience copying Forza over to an SSD? I timed it and it cuts ~10 seconds off of every single loading screen. That means when I boot up the game I save 10 seconds, when I go from the menu to a race I save 10 seconds, and when I go from a race back to the menu I save another 10 seconds. So with booting up the game and 1 race I save 30 seconds. Add it up. It makes up the time very quickly.And also, it takes very little effort to shuffle everything around. Before I play a game I know I'm going to be playing for a while I just copy it over to the SSD. If I need to make more space I simply delete the game from my SSD, and it's still on my Console's HDD anyways. It still shows up in my game library the same way whether it's on the HDD or SSD. You make it seem like it's so difficult when it's extremely simple. Maybe you just aren't intelligent enough to handle an SSD on your Xbox.
noeldillabough - Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - link
The best external drive that I've seen is using the "Collective Minds Media Hub" with a Samsung 850 Pro (or whatever 2.5" drive)..it matches the xbox perfectly and works well and most important adds a few usb ports in the front for temporarily adding a keyboard etc.nedge2k - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
IIRC, none of the Xbox's support UASP so 400MB/s is not possible and with the overhead of USB3 being greater, it'll be more like 200-250MB/sepobirs - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
A bit disappointing that the PS4 Pro doesn't have USB 3.1 support, although Sony's policy against external drives would make it moot. I'd really hope Project Scorpio, especially with its much later launch date, does incorporate the 10 Gb connection. My tests with a USB 3.1 to SATA enclosure connecting to a system with a PCIe SSD show it was able to completely saturate the SATA bus for 600 MB/s reads. A console loading to RAM should be able to do the same much of the time and by the time Scorpio is a shipping product, native USB 3.1 SSDs might be in the market or it may be practical to use PCIe M.2 devices over a single lane to USB 3.1 to get a good bit closer to the USB 3.1 upper limit.maincpa77 - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
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