Simple Question: 1 External HDD, many consoles

Submitted by Badditor90 t3_107wilb in consoles

So, My original plan was to upgrade my consoles with enough internal storage to store ALL my games, BUT, I am finding that to be financially unviable considering the Xbox Series X can only fit a M.2 2242 drive of which the highest capacity M.2 2242 consumers can get is 2tb, which imvho is pretty pitiful which being the "I must have uniformity" guy I am having say a 8tb M.2 2280 in a PS5 yet only a 2tb M.2 2242 in a Xbox Series X sets me off greatly as both are vastly different in capacity and even form factor.

Now for some added context, I am a man of convenience, I love the convenience of having all my owned games already installed and all I have to do is boot up the game, not having to uninstall a game to install the one I wish to play as to me that's inconvenient and kills the feeling.

One of the things I have noticed in my pursuit of convenience is that with each generation, my storage needs have shot up by 4x each gen, for instance, my entire ps2 library is about 250gb but my whole ps3 library is 1tb and my PS4 library is 4tb and I'd be lead to assume my ps5 library will become 16tb by the time the PS5 becomes an old console(Ala PS6's release), and the same echos in the Xbox lineup, 250gb for OG Xbox, 1tb Xbox 360, 4tb Xbox One, 16tb Xbox Series X, you see where I'm getting at.

So I had a alternative idea, what about I use an external drive, Store 95% of my total games on all consoles on that leaving each console with their paultry small amount of hdd space, that means getting effectively a 64tb drive(which atm only exists on either an enterprise level OR by lugging around a DAS(Direct Attached Storage) that has 4 16tb hdd's in RAID 10 connected to the console of choice via USB, UNLESS, I can access the storage server from the consoles by making a NAS(*Sarcastic*Oh wait, the older consoles can't because no one uses NAS's on consoles)

Ultimately, my question is: Could I use 1hdd, store all my console games on it then plug it into the console of choice and have my whole library for that console available for me to play on?

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Joshooahh t1_j3puqa2 wrote

Why tf would you need all the games installed,? When you probably play about 3 at any given time

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wiipe t1_j4q2qwe wrote

I think I got up to something like 7-8Tb in total storage for my Xbox before I gave up, but I only realized how unnecessary all that was afterwards. It was a slow build up. Few physical games a year, then a bunch more titles from GwG, and finally Game Pass. Feels silly now, but keeping all games installed was perfectly feasible not too long ago (natural time to stop to reconsider would have been when I ordered the second external HDD, but think hurt brain, me like not! Buy more feel good!)

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Kear_Bear_3747 t1_j3pvmut wrote

I have two external HDDs on my Xbox Series X. One is for pre-SX titles, the other is for all of the huge SX titles to shuttle back and forth to internal storage.

I then use this console as the hub for network sharing to my other two Xbox’s so I don’t have to move the HDDs or re-download any games.

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Ch0pp3dM4ng0 t1_j3qtnhd wrote

With my understanding, I'd say kind of.

When you initially plug in the HDD, the console will ask to format it, wiping all the data you have stored. (I'm unsure of any bypass).

Also, with next Gen games (ps5, XboxSX) you can store them on HDD but you won't be able to play them from the HDD, unlike PS4 and Xbox one games

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RBTropical t1_j3r9x2k wrote

You can get a CFexpress to M.2 adapter for your Series X and buy an 8TB NVME 2280 SSD…

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Nathan-David-Haslett t1_j3s6suh wrote

Can only speak for Xbox, but using games on it requires you to have the system format the drive so it's unable to be used for anything else.

Though you can totally go bigger than a 2tb (I have an 8tb), but of course you can't play series X games off of the external.

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