Should I replace Xbox One hard drive with a SSD

As games get more indepth, with better graphics, and more intensive story lines, the loading times of these games are getting much longer too. Although these loading times may only be minutes at a time, it can be quite frustrating when you turn on your console ready for an evening of extensive gaming.

With this in mind, there have been rumours circulating within the gaming community that by opting for a SSD for the Xbox One that this can help you to significantly reduce loading times; but is this really the case?

Limitations when you replace Xbox One hard drive with a SSD

The Xbox one drive comes with a 5,400 rpm SATA hard drive, turning in loading times of well over a minute for certain titles. Thankfully, the Microsoft’s machine has plenty of options to help you to speed up this some times frustrating down time.

However in real terms, this is only effective on the Xbox One X, and NOT the Xbox One S, simply because the Xbox One S hard drive interface is SATA II meaning it will only gain a very slight performance improvement benefits from installing a SSD drive.

Options for an Xbox One S

You could potentially buy an external SSD however you could also opt for a simple USB enclosure and use a spare laptop drive; as long as it has a SATA interface. This will allow you to copy a game from the internal drive to the attached drive.

However, this option does mean that all the Xbox One S system files (operating system) will still be running on the older 5,400 rpm SATA mechanical drive.

So, this is not really answering the question of should I replace Xbox one hard drive with SSD

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Is it worth replacing my Xbox one hard drive with an SSD?

Now just remember, as we mentioned above, by opting for an SSD will not dramatically improve the performance of an Xbox One S, only the Xbox One X will gain performance benefits.

You might be wondering just how much loading time using a SSD can save you. Well, it doesn’t actually even shave off that much time at all!

Looking at recent tests conducted, we discovered that Dead Rising 4, a game that has so many patches, can actually see loading times of 29 seconds direct from the drive. When using an SSD to test out speeds, only 8 seconds were shaved off of the prologue.

So you might be looking at this slight shaving of time and wondering if it is worth all the hassle; especially for you Dead Rising fans out there.

Well, maybe..

How about a game known for its massive loading times? Grand Theft Auto Five for arguments sake! Now this is a game that can see loading times of around 88 seconds (1 minute 28 seconds) according to the tests we have studied on an Xbox One X.

Now switching to an SSD actually saw a decrease in load time of around a minute – so quite a worthy saving! Imagine the extra playing time you could see over the course of a month!

You can see from the studies that there are a few lessons learned. The first being quite obvious; a SSD is a premium, costly option but certainly can work. However as we keep mentioning, this will only work on the Xbox One X.

Final Thoughts

One thing to always consider is the life span of an SSD. We hear of many people mentioning that an SSD only have a life span of a set number of read and write transactions which is correct. However in real life, these are very high meaning the life span will likely outlast the life of your Xbox One console!