Xbox One Hard Drive Not Removable, Supports External USB Drives

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The Xbox One, which was announced earlier today, is going to be shipping with a 500GB hard drive built in. What Microsoft didn't mention, but confirmed with Engadget, is that system owners will no longer be able to remove, replace, or service the hard drive.

The reason why Xbox 360 owners could not use third party hard disks was because of a sector on the disk known as the "security sector" or "security blob" which is signed by Microsoft with a private key would be invalid. Disks could possibly be encrypted this time around with a unique per-box key, similar to how keyvaults worked.

If Microsoft did choose to encrypt the hard drive, that would mean it would be more difficult to obtain game files since every game must be installed to the hard disk. Sony has proven with the PS3 that disk encryption adds very little to no noticeable latency when performing I/O operations.

With all of the cloud integration into the Xbox One it is really not surprising that the HDD is not removable. In their talk with Albert Penello, Engadget also confirmed that removable media will be supported for expanding storage on the Xbox One. What hasn't been confirmed though is whether or not it will work similar to the Xbox 360's expandable storage in that only FAT32-formatted devices can be utilized.

It can be assumed though that most modern file systems such as NTFS and the FAT variants will be supported on the Xbox One. If Microsoft also wants full control over the management of their files, they will again take the Xbox 360 approach by creating files with the chosen capacity, and writing their own file system layer on top of that.

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Related Forum: Xbox Forum

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"Xbox One Hard Drive Not Removable, Supports External USB Drives" :: Login/Create an Account :: 69 comments

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slapshot101Posted:

I hope that in the next few months that they will make 1TB models or bigger to hold all your files, because cloud storage doesn't work for everyone like me who can't access 8 GB games with a 1MB connection.

NasyrPosted:

liamcole123 After 15 games your HDD will be full, especially if you have to install all games!/quote]

this part I have the same opinion as you its stupid they force you to install the game. So basically you have no memory left.

liamcole123Posted:

This is stupid, the new discs will hold 50GB, the old discs had 8GB maximum! After 15 games your HDD will be full, especially if you have to install all games! A 2TB HDD would be needed at the very least. After all the stuff I've read about the Xbox One, I definitely won't be buying it!

ExtractionPosted:

Pretty stupid, think about it. The game discs are set to hold 50GB each, meaning that the games are going to be larger than the current games (8GB max). That 500GB SOUNDS like a lot, but you're not going to be able to play much games with it considering you have to install every game. M$ needs to rethink their stuff.

SeedPosted:

Gossip So it should be harder to mod games


Yes....yes it will

SeedPosted:

Well as I can see hard drive modding wont be possible anymore along with other mods :(

slapshot101Posted:

Gossip So it should be harder to mod games

Not really, you can just use an external Hard drive like a USB, so it should be just as easy to mod things like gamesaves.

GossipPosted:

So it should be harder to mod games

TopNotchKiNGPosted:

Well this will be an easy work around. I guarantee that this will be on an agenda list for every modded that will own an Xbox One. The HDD might not have the ability to be removed by the general user but it will be able to get removed by a console modder as soon as we figure out how to open it lol

SwiftPosted:

Heatwave This will be slightly annoying, if i wanted to go around a friends house, still though it holds enough space


Then you could put it on an external hard drive.


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