When Seagate first announced the Game Drive for Xbox, they chose Gamescon as a venue to launch the new product. With the prolific Xbox branding, this is not a drive they would expect you to purchase for use with your MacBook. Not that you couldn’t of course, but they seem to have a pretty clearly defined target market for the Game Drive.

When Microsoft first launched the Xbox One, it came with a 500 GB internal drive, of which about 360 GB is available for the end user. Since that time, they have also released models with 1 TB of internal storage. It is unfortunate that the Xbox One does not feature an easily replaceable drive, but a few months after release they added support for external USB drives. The Seagate Game Drive for Xbox is specifically designed for this role. It has been certified by Microsoft for use with the Xbox, but mostly it has been branded with Xbox and colored Xbox green.

The package comes with just the drive and a micro USB 3.0 cable for use, which is 18-inches in length. The drive is pre-formatted with NTFS and if you want you can of course use this as a USB 3.0 storage drive on a PC as well. Maybe you are an Xbox fan. The drive is powered by the USB cable as well so there are no other connections necessary.

Configuring the drive for use with the Xbox is as easy as plugging it in. The Xbox will detect it and ask if you want to format it for use with games and content, and you just say yes. Easy as that.

Once installed on the Xbox it will ask you if you want to use it as the default save location for new downloads and game installs. The Xbox does not pool this drive, which makes it slightly more complicated to use since if you want your existing games there you have to move them. Pooling would make this seamless for the end user. The advantage of pooling though is that you can bring your Game Drive with you over to another Xbox and you will be guaranteed that your games are there, so you can just start playing.

As someone who has been around the field for a while, it continues to amaze me how much storage they can fit into a magnetic platter. The Game Drive for Xbox is 2 TB (calculated in base 10 for reasons only marketing would be able to explain) and adds a significant amount of storage to the Xbox One without being bulky. It is very small and quiet, being a laptop based drive. There are no cooling fans to fail, or ramp up in volume.

Performance of the Game Drive for Xbox is quite good for a small spinning drive. Read and write speed for sequential files is over 130 MB/s and being a spinning disk, random workloads fall well below that maximum speed.

The physical device measures 117mm x 80mm x 14.8mm and weighs 170 grams. It is actually smaller in person than I expected from the product shots. The green case is only green on the top, and black underneath. I like the green, but considering the Xbox One is generally black, it kind of stands out and doesn’t really match any home theatre equipment.

So do you need a green USB hard drive for the Xbox? No, of course not. Considering the package is only a couple of dollars more than Seagate’s standard 2.5-inch drive USB 3.0 product, I appreciate them trying to reach out to a different audience than those who just want a basic black hard drive, and in case you were wondering, it also works with the Xbox 360.

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  • extide - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    You'd be better of with a hybrid drive, though.
  • Peichen - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    It would be great if these game consoles have a 3.5" HDD tray with caddy so everyone can just boy a drive from Newegg and swap in. 4TB 5900rpm drive is like what? $150?
  • olafgarten - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    That was like the OG PS3, the hard drive tray was behind a sticker and 2 standard screws
  • peterfares - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Same with PS4. Except they both use 2.5" drives, not 3.5" drives. 360 and XB1 also use 2.5" drives. Only PS2 and the original Xbox used 3.5" drives.
  • qlum - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    I wonder if its going to be plugged pretty much permanently in a gaming console why not make it a externally powered 3.5inch drive. In this usecase there isn't much need for an usb powered drive.
  • Brett Howse - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    One of the things you can do with it is bring it with you so you can bring your games to another console. A small USB powered drive is way better for this.
  • havokagain - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    Over in the UK it seems to be £12 more than a standard seagate drive. Plus the 2tb external is the most failed hdd in the past year. I just use the last of my barracudas in an external caddy. Lots of people have lost faith in seagate hard drives but once you get to 4tb drives the old reputation of their reliability come back into play it seems. I have had 4 new seagate drives both internal and external fail in the last 10 months all 1/2tb drives - strange that.
  • stephenbrooks - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link

    Hmmmm... I want to move my Steam folder onto this. I'm pretty sure I could persuade some people it's a USB-powered "micro console" that allows PCs to play more games.
  • RussianSensation - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link

    "Seagate 2TB Game Drive for Xbox review"
    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2...

    ^ Essentially identical drive to the 2.5" external Seagate 2014 and 2015 models that actually cost less but don't have the colour green.

    Since the XB1 is already a fairly large console, I see little point in this drive for it. If looking for bang-for-the-buck and long-term usage over the next 4-5 years of the console's life, or longer, I'd much rather just buy a 4-5TB 3.5" drive for $120-130. 2.5" HDDs are still overpriced due to the form factor and are more suitable for being a companion to a notebook while travelling where it's very convenient to use it as secondary storage/backup since it's powered via a USB. On the other hand, since the home console is plugged into a wall socket and isn't portable for most gamers, it makes way more sense to maximize storage size and speed (7200rpm) and just get a 3.5" external.
  • Miller1331 - Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - link

    I run a 2.5 inch USB 3.0 Seagate drive and it works fine for me

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