Seagate Game Drive for Xbox, 4TB, External Hard Drive Portable, USB 3.2 Gen 1, Black with built-in green LED bar, Xbox Certified, 2 year Rescue Services (STKX4000402)

Product Information

There are some cosmetic reasons to go for the FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive, not least that it comes in a range of different designs featuring classic Xbox heroes and Marvel and Star Wars fan favourites. Like the FireCuda SSD, it also has a cool illuminated bar on the front edge that flashes when the drive is busy. Yet the real reason to pay a little extra is that its performance is very good. On paper, the Toshiba Canvio Flex has faster sequential read/write speeds, while its random read/write speeds aren’t far behind. In practice, though, we found the FireCuda slightly faster to load some games and two or three seconds faster when loading save games, although the Toshiba had the edge on Prey. The difference isn’t that significant, but if you like the styling then this drive won’t let you down when it comes to performance. The best external drives for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S 1. Toshiba Canvio Flex 2TB: Best value HDD for Xbox Series consoles While Toshiba sells a gaming-specific version of its Canvio external HDD, the Canvio Flex is the current king when it comes to price, performance and value. It’s cheaper than most competitors, yet also one of the fastest portable HDDs we’ve tested. Our PC benchmarks place its sequential read/write speeds over a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A connection at 151.5MB/sec and 158.9MB/sec, and there’s precious little in it between the Canvio Flex and Canvio Gaming when it comes to random read/write speeds. Plugged into the Xbox Series X, it’s very competitive with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive, taking four seconds longer to load a saved game in Prey, but coming first by just under three seconds in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can also save a minute or so over slower drives when it comes to moving or copying installed games. Sure, it’s nowhere near as speedy as an SSD, but if you just want a drive for archiving Series S/X games and playing your old Xbox One favourites, this could be all you need. Combining this with an expansion card that you can afford is most likely the best option in the long, as you get better performance for all of your games, not just mass storage. Naturally, price is going to be the limiting factor here.

Its USB-C port can be used on your devices as either a USB-A or USB-C connection and in our testing, we got the same speeds through either port so it shouldn't matter which you have free or available, or if you change the device it's used with during its lifetime. There's a small but clear LED indicator on one of the short ends which is always a help, but one small downside is that it does get a little warm when in use so it'll pay to keep that in mind when positioning it. SSDs are typically much faster than HDDs, but that can mean they’ll typically be more expensive. SSDs typically also have smaller storage capacities overall, unless you choose to pay a princely sum for a larger capacity model. HDDs are much more space friendly, with some models offering up to 5TB or 8TB worth of space. They’re often cheaper, too, but perform slower on average than SSDs. A full install of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II with the Warzone 2.0 Battle Royale mode will take well over 100GB on the internal SSD. Ditto for Forza Horizon 5. Go for this year’s big exclusive, Starfield, and you’re looking at around 125GB. Sign up to Xbox Games Pass and make use of its extensive library, and you could see your available storage space reduced to zero before you know it. You’re after more space: As it can’t run Xbox Series X|S games natively, you may want to opt for a HDD for more storage space overall.We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the Xbox Series S and Series X. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level, or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive. With a rating of 5,900 RPM, this massive external hard drive isn't branded in any special way, but it manages to stand out due to how large it is. Due to its size, this isn't a simple plug-and-play, as the drive needs its own power supply via an 18W adapter that's naturally included. You’re on a budget: You might want to look elsewhere if you were hoping to spend less overall on an external SSD.

So, what if you're not looking to spend a ridiculous amount of money, but you still need a fair bit of extra storage? If you're looking to reduce your problems with storing older titles, this 4TB hard drive from WD will remove most of your woes. Compared to running games on a standard external HDD we managed to decrease loading times on Resident Evil 7 from game selection to gameplay from around 90 seconds to just one minute. Transfer times here worked great too. It only took us 3 minutes 48 seconds to move 30GB compared to 7:16 when using an HDD. The final option to consider isn't an external hard drive. Rather, it's an external SSD. The Samsung T7 SSD series is an interesting balance that can help if you need speed while still trying to save some money, providing an overall great middle ground in almost every way.Interface type: The Xbox One series of consoles supports up to two external hard drives, connected via a USB 3 cable. This is important: the Xbox One doesn’t support newer USB 3.1 gen 2, or indeed USB-C or other miniaturised versions of the USB connector (miniUSB or microUSB). Fortunately, most modern external hard drives have a USB 3 cable, so you won’t need to worry too much about this. It's totally up to you whether you go for capacity in the form of HDD, or shoot for faster performance in the form of an SSD. No matter what you choose, one of the best Xbox One hard drives will be an extremely handy tool to have in your console's loadout. You won’t actually notice much difference in terms of general gameplay, so the main advantage of an SSD is the significant reductions in your loading times. Here, much depends on the individual game. Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t really load any faster with an SSD than it does with an external HDD, but when loading saved games it’s a different story. While you could be looking at a nearly two minute (133 second) wait on Xbox One X with an external HDD, that drops to just 71 seconds with an SSD. We run two sets of tests when we’re looking at external hard drives for the Xbox One or One X. First, we connect them to a PC and run the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test their raw sequential and random read/write speeds. Sequential speeds are an indication of how fast the drive can read or write large quantities of data in one sustained burst, which makes a big difference when you’re first running a game, loading a saved game, streaming in all the models and textures in a level, or transferring a game from one drive to another. Random read/write speeds cover smaller data transfers, and make an impact when you’re running a game directly from the hard drive.