Most of the Xbox One Games have a size in two to three digit figure (in GBs), and if you only have a 500 GB or a 1TB hard drive, running out of space for a regular gamer is not a surprise. Adding to this, if you are into buying digital games, re-downloading the games take a toll on your bandwidth, time, and especially those big updates.
I have a WD external hard drive - I would like my computor to download files (as backup) directly. Hey everyone! This is just a simple question. I have a two terabyte external hard drive on my xbox one console. It already has games on it. When I formatted it. How to Use an External Hard Drive with Xbox One By Ryan Lynch – Posted on May 12, 2017 May 11, 2017 in Gaming As you may or may not know, all Xbox One games must be fully installed to your console’s hard drive for optimal play experience. Sep 11, 2017 - You can use any external HDD that has a USB 3.0 connection. The PS4 and PS4 Pro will. The external drive is set as the default destination for any game you purchase or download from your Library. You might think setting. How to Copy XBOX One Games From External HDD to Another. Download XBOX One External Device Converter. Once downloaded, just do these simple steps to get your files to another drive. Detect Your Hard Drive. Run the application as Administrator and click scan. This will detect storage devices in your system and list them down.
Good news is that Xbox One supports external drives which can be used for to install games and keep them there, while you still use the internal storage for downloading, and install the new games. In this post, I am going to share how you can achieve it.
![Game Game](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/37a92a20-433a-438e-8b07-3f067f7a26a4_1.b028f7b8e66a35a7806b17281d452c4e.jpeg?odnHeight=450&odnWidth=450&odnBg=FFFFFF)
While I am using Games in this context, you can also move apps to external drives as well. It’s an uncommon scenario, but its possible, and works the same way as it works for the game.
Hardware Requirement & Initial Setup
You will need a hard drive of at least 256 GB with USB 3.0 support. I use my Western Digital hard drive, and it works fine. However, if you are picking a new one, take one with high storage space, and faster speed for the performance.
Setting up a new Hard Drive:
Plug in your drive into any of the Xbox One USB port, and it will prompt on how you intend to use it. You can use it for storing media files, like DVR game clips, etc., or you can use it for installing games. If you select gaming, it will format the hard drive as per Xbox One need, and it cannot be used for anything unless you format it. This is a screenshot of what happens when you plug a hard drive into your Xbox One. Select Format Storage Device.
When you select this option, all your data on the drive will be erased permanently. So if you have anything on the drive, make sure to back it up.
In case, you accidentally choose Use for Media, follow the steps below to convert it for games.
- Press Guide button on your Xbox One controller.
- Navigate to the right using the right bumper to System.
- Select Settings, and navigate to System section, and select Storage.
- This will list all your drives, both external, and internal.
- Use the cursor keys on your controller to find the hard drive you want to use for gaming.
- Once you find it, press A button on the controller to open the options.
- You should see
- View Contents.
- Format for games, & apps.
- Set as Capture Location.
- Select Format for games, & apps.
- In the next screen, select Format Storage Device, and give a unique name to the drive.
- Post this, Xbox One will prompt if you want to choose this as default storage device for games from now on. Choose Keep Current location.
- You will have to re-confirm it again, and you should get a message that the drive is ready.
Transfer Xbox games to external hard drive
Now that our setup is complete let’s learn how to move the games from your internal drive to external drive.
The primary reason I suggested not to set the new external drive as default storage location was for performance. Internal drive will always be faster, and you can always use the external drive to move games which you are not playing for now. If you intend to play them once in a while, you don’t have to move them back, but always play from right there, seamlessly.
Let’s start:
- Make sure you are signed in with your account.
- Press the Guide button, and open My games & apps.
- Go to the game you want to move using cursor keys on the controller.
- Press the Menu button on the controller. Then select Manage Game.
- Surprisingly, the next screen offers two options.
- Move All: This will copy all related content over to the external hard drive.
- Copy All: This will keep a copy on both internal hard drive and external drive.
- Select Move All.
- Confirm the drive on the next screen.
Once done, you will see your drive listed with the name you gave it. It will list the game you moved here and a progress bar. This will give you a fair idea of how much time it might take for the game to be moved. The bigger the game is, the more time it will take.
That said there are some important things you should know:
- You can cancel the transfer anytime, and your games will still work. There is an option to pause it as well.
- The reason why there is a copy option is that if you are planning to transfer the games to a new console or another one, you will need to have a copy left on your primary console.
- Lastly, you can perform multiple move or copy. The next game will be added to the queue. You can see it under “Queue” section in My apps & games.
To transfer the game back to internal storage, follow the same steps, and this time choose internal storage instead of external storage.
How to bulk transfer Apps and Games on Xbox One
Microsoft has built an option for bulk transfer for those who have too many games to move to an external drive or internal storage. Its called as Transfer, and you can move both apps, and games using this.
Microsoft recently added the ability to transfer items between drives in bulk, to ease the process during big transitions. This should be especially helpful for those upgrading to the Xbox One X this fall, allowing large games (and their 4K updates) to be transferred with ease.
- Go to Settings > System > Storage, and open it.
- Navigate to the drive from which you want to bulk transfer.
- Press A on the controller for the menu.
- Select Transfer.
- This screen offers
- Option to select the destination if you have multiple external drives.
- Select All or select ones you want.
- Sort by name or last used or last update or by size.
- Next select Move Selected.
- This will initiate the transfer, and you should be able to see them in Queue.
This covers up all the options for transferring, moving, and copying files from Xbox One to internal storage, and back to internet storage. How many games you have on your console? Do you use an external drive? How are you managing things when storage falls short? Let us know in the comments.
![Hard Hard](https://blog.seagate.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PS4-with-Seagate-Backup-Plus.jpg)
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- Download games from steam to another drive 5 answers
I want to save some space on my SSD and have Steam and its games stored on an external drive.
Is it possible to install Steam and its games on an external drive ? Will some of the installation files be stored on my SSD ? Will games run sufficiently fast when played from the external drive ?
user9983
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marked as duplicate by user9983, Frank, Kexlox, Kappei, fredleyAug 1 '13 at 16:24
This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.
2 Answers
Find External Hard Drive On This Pc
When you come to install Steam, you should get a choice of where to install it, under custom installation if I remember correctly. If not, steam isn't massive anyway.
When you come to install games, you can choose a Steam library to install to. The default is the
%steamapps
folder within the steam installation directory. You can choose to use a different folder with each game:Note: I already had a steam library on my HDD but it was straight forward to create a new one.
Sean KennySean Kenny
Download Games On Flash Drive
All you have to do is junction the Steamapps folder to a folder on an external drive. On 64 bit windows that's
C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamapps
See this super user answer for how to make a junction, there are also programs/shell extentions that make it easier, but for one junction, this is pretty easy.
Since you're on windows 7, this code should work:
Note that if you do this Steam will act rather weirdly if you run it while the external drive plugged in; it will attempt to download updates for games that aren't there and will force re-checks of your games on occasion since they went 'missing'. It's nothing major, but just try to avoid running Steam while the drive isn't plugged in.
I do this both on my Desktop (Steam installed on SSD, games are on an HDD) and a laptop where they're on an external drive. It works quite well.
Community♦
Download Game On External Hard Drive Computer
Ben BrockaBen Brocka