How to set up a USB external storage on Xbox One for new games and apps

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If you got a shiny new XBox One for the holidays, you might want to expand the storage so that you can install all of your games. The good news is that you can add an external hard drive to your XBox One to add more storage. The original Microsoft XBox One offered 500GB of storage space, and now they’re offering a 1TB version. Even with that much storage, most of the popular games can take up 50GB-100GB of storage space each.

Requirements

Although, you don’t need to buy an official proprietary Xbox One external hard drive, you need to buy a compatible storage that meets the following requirements:

– Storage must use a USB 3.0 connection. If you’re connecting the drive through a hub, the hub has to use USB 3.0 or later technology.
– The hard drive must be 256GB or larger.
– If the device you’re connecting doesn’t meet the minimum requirements, then it will be treated as media storage for music and video only.

Instructions

Keep in mind that in order to make drive usable to store new games and apps, Xbox One needs to erase and reformat the drive, which means that you will lose all the content on the drive, as such make sure to backup your data before connecting the external hard drive to your Xbox One.

When you connect the external USB 3.0 hard drive to your Xbox One, the console should automatically, detect the new device and guide you through the process, which involves:
– Choose the Format storage device.
– Typing a name of the storage. Here you want to use a descriptive name, e.g., XBOne Storage.
– Choosing the Install new things here option. This will install all new games and apps to your external drive. Selecting Keep Current Location will continue installing new games and apps to the internal drive, giving you the option to move them to the external drive later.

If the console doesn’t seem to recognize the external storage, you can do the detection process manually:
– Open the left pane to access the new menu and go to Settings.
– Navigate through All settings > System > Storage.
– Select the new drive and you should be able to go through the setup process.

Manually Move Games & Apps To External Storage

After setting up the external hard drive on your Xbox One, only new games and apps will install automatically in the new drive. If the internal hard drive of your console is full, you will have to manually move games and apps to the new device. To do this, follow the steps below:

– From the Xbox One dashboard, go to My games & apps.
– Go to Games, select a game, press the Menu, and select Manage game.
– Select the dropdown menu, select Move all, and then Move, to move the game to the newly installed drive.
– Repeat the process for each game and app, you want to move the new storage.

Remember that when you’re in “My games & apps”, you should be able to see your entire games collection. If you’re only seeing a partial list, it’s likely because, you’re only showing games from one drive. If this is the case, select the Store device drop down menu, and select All.


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