So Microsoft was never very clear on what was necessary to run an external hard drive on the XBox One.
Their requirements are:
- Must be USB 3
- Must be big enough
That's pretty much it.
Sadly? Those are NOT the requirements. Nobody knows what the requirements are, but if you take a perfectly good USB 3 hard disk and hook it up you will get VERY unpredictable results. Sometimes it disappears. Sometimes it loses data. Sometimes it works ok. Sometimes your game quits when you aren't at a save point and you put the controller through the screen of your very expensive and irreplaceable plasma TV in anger...
Then you start shopping for a legitimate drive. And you discover that there's no such thing. Microsoft doesn't sell one. There's a seagate (it's GREEN. Bright green.) and a Western Digital. Having had a recent string of failed Seagate drives (which could certainly change to WD in the near future, they tend to take turns) I opted for WD.
And I couldn't be happier. Plugged it in, set it on top of the XBox, and promptly FORGOT IT WAS THERE BECAUSE IT JUST WORKS.
Physically it's thicker than a normal drive (is there a large hard disk in there or is that extra electronics or just a bulky case? I don't know!)
### UPDATE: It turns out that it's a thicker disk. More spindles, more reliable. Or so they claim. But definitely a bulkier drive. ###
The footprint is roughly the same. It's sleek, it's quiet, and it's fast. That's really all that matters since the XBox One is such a black box (in spite of running Windows 10).
I have no complaints, it runs great.
| Hard Drive | 2 TB Mechanical Hard Disk |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
