The great storage wars

It is hard to believe it has been over a year since the next generation of gaming consoles dropped. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S are now the default machines even if they are still impossible to purchase. Since getting both consoles one thing has become abundantly clear over time, there simply is not enough space to store all my games without outside help. Recently Seagate sent over a collection of storage devices for both machines to help remedy the situation. In this article I am going to take a look at three of them to help alleviate the dreaded delete and re-download process we have all become accustomed to since launch.

To get started it is worth noting that both consoles now support what is known as ‘cold storage’ which means the games that require the super speed NVME technology built into both, can be stored on standard external drives, but not played from them. I will be covering one solution for that, as well as one solution for each console that can directly run the games.

Seagate Game Drive Hub – MSRP: $219.99

Let’s kick things off with Seagate’s 8TB Game Drive Hub. This massive beast will hold an absolute ton of games. I opted to connect it to my Xbox Series X as a drive that is for Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games, all that do not require the new NVME speeds. I was able to store hundreds of games on this drive and the speed is decent. It is equivalent to the original hard drives found in the consoles themselves. It is sleek in design with a cool RGB light on the front that glows green when powered on. It has two USB ports for charging controllers, one standard and one USB-C connection. It does require an external power supply though which can be a deal breaker for some.

I was able to store an absolute metric ton of games with minimal performance degradation in loading. However, the Xbox starts to get slower as more games and DLC are indexed on the console. This only affects moving around the dashboard though and only for a short time. It is extremely satisfying to see the triple digit numbers for my installed games and being able to have any of them at the ready whenever I wanted to play them. This drive will run you between $200 and $220 currently. That seems pricey, but the sheer amount of storage is truly unmatched in the console world.

Xbox Expansion Card – MSRP: $139 (512GB) $219 (1TB) $399 (2TB)

Next we move on to the expansion card for the Xbox Series X/S. The Series X comes with just under a TB of storage out of the box, but the Series S is even lower with just over 300GB of available space. So unless you have an extremely fast download speed or use Cloud gaming on the console, these cards are a must-have. Seagate offers up multiple increments of 500GB, 1TB, and the monster 2TB. With these being NVME storage solutions though the price will not be cheap. I was sent the 2TB card, which will run players around $399 at retail, which is right in between the cost of the Series S and the X.

What I really like about the Xbox solution is that these cards are simply plug and play. There is a slot on the back of both consoles where the cards can be slotted in just like a memory card and instant storage expansion. These can also be hot-swapped at any time, so having multiple cards with various games on them is an option. I moved games between the card and the internal storage and was impressed how fast games moved back and forth. I could move some of the biggest titles in a matter of minutes. It was impressive. The loading times are also on par with the internal storage. I only clocked seconds difference between the two. The price-to-size ratio might seem expensive, but the benefits of this speedy storage are present right out of the box.

FireCuda 530 – MSRP: $149 (500GB) $250 (1TB) $515 (2TB) $999 (4TB)

Finally we have reached the PlayStation 5. At launch both versions of Sony’s console only offered up around 600GB of space, which is just not enough for the future of gaming. Sony dragged their feet on offering up support for adding more space to play games from. Sure we could use cold storage with USB drives, but we all wanted that sweet SSD speed expansion to play games from. Finally they added the ability and I was eager to get a new hard drive into the machine so I could store more native PS5 games.

There is a little more to this process than those on Xbox. Installing a new SSD expansion requires a specific drive with a heatsink as well as taking apart the console. To say it is daunting to the normal user is an understatement. I am here to tell you though, this process is nearly painless and pretty simple to execute.

There are several videos online on how to open up the PS5, but taking off the side panels is relatively easy. Just lifting and pushing down it popped right off. I barely had to apply any pressure. Once removed I had access to the expansion bay. One quick screw and the spot was exposed. Then I remove the spacer with another quick screw. Angle the drive into the slot as it clicks into place. Be sure to measure the spacer and install it first. The whole process took about five minutes to do, then it was time to power up the machine.

Turning it on the PS5 automatically recognizes the new drive. Asks to format it, then does a speed test to make sure it meets Sony’s requirements. Then it shows up in the options menu as an M.2 SSD expansion. I did some testing of moving games back and forth and the speed was ridiculous. Moving games from the internal to the new drive took minutes even for the biggest games. Now with 4TB of space added to my PS5, I can finally have more than a handful of games installed at a time, which is a huge improvement.

With both of these new consoles storage is a problem. It has only been a year and while neither have had a ton of games exclusive to the new machines, my storage was already running dry. These options from Seagate really help. This new technology comes with a price though. So the big question is either re-downloading everything or laying down the money to expand your storage. These drives work and work well, so if you have the means I definitely recommend them. They are easy to use, fast, and best of all let me keep more games at my fingertips.

Review units provided by publisher.