• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Jeff Grubb Series X storage speed loading video

shark97

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,327
If you're like me and have decided cold storage is probably the way to go against the $220 SSD card, but werent sure whether for $100 a ~6TB HDD or 1TB SSD would be the better call, this was informative.



Summary, transferring AC Origins with Series X, minutes:seconds

Internal SSD to external SSD: 4:33

Internal SSD to external HDD: 10:36

External SSD to Internal SSD: 2:18

External HDD to Internal SSD: 7:46

NVME external SSD vs Sata makes no real difference, USB is the limiter.

Seeing it like that makes me think a large external HDD is the way to go. Although in moving a game from the HDD to my 1X the other day ~8 minutes seems like a really long time when you're sitting there waiting on it, ~8-10 minutes or so to transfer a game from cold storage to series x internal ssd should be nicely manageable overall, just go make a proverbial sandwich or something. It will beat the pants off downloading the game or installing it from Blu Ray.

The next question I'd have is whether it might be better to put the $100 in hypothetical cold storage towards the $220 SSD card in the long run, if you figure you're going to end up getting that eventually anyway. Bit harder question, but something like a 6TB external could be useful through the life of the system regardless.
 
xxracerxx

xxracerxx

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
31,222
External SSD is the way if you are going to be moving a bunch to cold storage and back.
 
delete

delete

Member
Jul 4, 2019
1,189
good for BC games, but can you play series x games from an external ssd? Probably more worth getting the xbox 1tb option so that you can have the storage and play the game without transferring.
 
Speely

Speely

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,998
Wow. Wonder if the best value option for a Series S will be using an external SSD as well?

Edit: assuming you want to upgrade your storage on the S, which you WILL.
 

Deleted member 16908

Oct 27, 2017
9,377
Don't 1TB external SSDs pretty much cost as much as the official expansion card?
 
Jiraiya

Jiraiya

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,295
I have no complaints about next gen storage with those speeds. Ten minutes isn't bad at all.
 
Scottoest

Scottoest

Member
Feb 4, 2020
11,362
I've already got an external 2TB SSD plugged into my One X, so I think I'll just keep using that for both current-gen games, and as "cold storage" for next-gen games I'm not playing but might again in the future.
 
PopcornMegaphone

PopcornMegaphone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,158
This is helpful. I doubt I'll need more storage than what the X provides, but if I do I'll go with a cheap external drive and then move stuff over to the SSD.
 
OP
OP

shark97

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,327
xxracerxx said:
External SSD is the way if you are going to be moving a bunch to cold storage and back.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Is it? seems you can get 4-5 GB of external HDD vs about 1GB of external SSD for the same ~$100. I'm not sure the former doesn't make more sense. Sure it's a bit slower, but it holds a whole lot more, and the idea of practically being able to not worry about storage is appealing to me.

BTW anybody know if you would be able to download games directly to the cold storage/external, or you have to download to internal first then transfer internal to external?
 
tryagainlater

tryagainlater

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,251
That is definitely a lot quicker than downloading it again. 800 gigs in the PS5 and my 4TB HDD should be ok. I may have to stop downloading every single PS+ game that I never play though :P
 
rntongo

rntongo

Banned
Jan 6, 2020
2,712
How com SATA external and NVMe external performa almost the same as internal SSD? So that means the BC games don't take full advantage of the XVA.
 
0ptimusPayne

0ptimusPayne

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,754
shark97 said:
Is it? seems you can get 4-5 GB of external HDD vs about 1GB of external SSD for the same ~$100. I'm not sure the former doesn't make more sense. Sure it's a bit slower, but it holds a whole lot more, and the idea of practically being able to not worry about storage is appealing to me.

BTW anybody know if you would be able to download games directly to the cold storage/external, or you have to download to internal first then transfer internal to external?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Currently you can choose which drive is the primary drive For game downloads. I hope there will be an option to choose which drive to DL your game to on a game by game basis next gen, or you'll be stuck going into the storage setting each time and switching back and forth between what drive you want to use as your primary drive When you want to DL a game straight to the internal to play, or DL to the external to play later/add to your backlog.
 
theAllseeingEYE

theAllseeingEYE

Member
Apr 4, 2018
4,516
Vancouver, BC
I'm just going with an external 2TB and the internal 1TB.

My plan is to hold out as long as I can, so that hopefully within the next 6 months to a year, somebody releases cheaper storage options. Even more ideal though, would be a drive bay that fits any 2.4GB NVMe. Hopefully the Series X would auto-format it.
 
Last edited:
KodiakGTS

KodiakGTS

Member
Jun 4, 2018
1,098
PlayBee said:
Does the Series X only have USB 3.0 (3.2 Gen 1)? I have an external M.2 that reads/writes at about 1GB/s whereas SATA SSDs top out at about 550MB/s
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, it uses Gen1, so 625 MB/s theoretical max through the port, but not sure what the actual max it will hit is. I ended up doing an external M2 enclosure and 1 TB SSD for ~$150 figuring that whenever the proprietary cards become cheaper in a few years I'll pick one of those up and just use the other SSD as a general purpose drive for my PC/Laptops.
 
rntongo

rntongo

Banned
Jan 6, 2020
2,712
Robinson said:
Don't 1TB external SSDs pretty much cost as much as the official expansion card?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You could get a Sabrent 1TB NVMe Gen 3 SSD for $149 and an eclosure for $13. Then if you want to be fancy, $199 for the Gen 4 SSD and a $13 enclosure. But the official expansion card will be able to use the full power of the XVA. By next year these SSDs are going to be dirt cheap though.
 
nss

nss

Member
Apr 10, 2018
1,791
Transistor said:
Those times aren't too bad for an external SSD. Those would be the way to go
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah I have an external 1 TB Samsung T5 that I'll be using for expansion in the short term, until PCIE4 compatible SSDs get cheaper. Hopefully we can get to a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro being ~$200 in 2 years.
 
xxracerxx

xxracerxx

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
31,222
nss said:
Yeah I have an external 1 TB Samsung T5 that I'll be using for expansion in the short term, until PCIE4 compatible SSDs get cheaper. Hopefully we can get to a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro being ~$200 in 2 years.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We'll see. I doubt the cards will get that cheap that fast (if ever) seeing how it is proprietary and all.

edit: unless you are talking external, then yeah hopefully.
 

Ashhong

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,640
rntongo said:
You could get a Sabrent 1TB NVMe Gen 3 SSD for $149 and an eclosure for $13. Then if you want to be fancy, $199 for the Gen 4 SSD and a $13 enclosure. But the official expansion card will be able to use the full power of the XVA. By next year these SSDs are going to be dirt cheap though.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Why spend more on an nvme? Op says it performs the same as sata. I'm sure there are 1tb sata ssd under $100

I'm cheap though and would probably get a much larger HDD for like $50. I can wait 10 minutes for the once in a blue moon game transfer.
 

Deleted member 70824

User requested account closure
Banned
Jun 2, 2020
923
delete said:
good for BC games, but can you play series x games from an external ssd? Probably more worth getting the xbox 1tb option so that you can have the storage and play the game without transferring.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No external SSD or HDD will play Series S or X games. Only the official expansion card.

Also worth keeping in mind that the 1TB will also run out of space.
 
Kotze282

Kotze282

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,255
That is a lot faster than I would have thought. Kinda makes the storage expansion even for the Series S look like a bad option. It's either pay 230 bucks or wait like 10 minutes to transfer a game from the external drive into the internal one.
 
eso76

eso76

Prophet of Truth
Member
Dec 8, 2017
8,120
1tb nvme is around 100$ with a USB3 enclosure and it will give you a very nice speed boost with BC games.

In Grubb's tests booting Xbox one games off USB SSD was just a tad slower compared to internal Series X SSD.

Sure, 100$ would buy you 4/5x as many tb in traditional HDD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.