This is bullsh*t microsoft.

[QuintonKKoenig]

So, due to the recent release of some games that are taking up a significant amount of space on the internal storage on my Xbox Series S, I recently (and I emphasize recently, due to their previously outrageous price) looked into the proprietary storage upgrade. Now, being the cheap-o that I am I attempted to make my own first. I have an existing 1tb 2230 M.2 from when I had tried upgrading the internal storage on said console (do NOT even get me started on that one) so I bought an CFe to M.2 adapter. Before I mounted the SSD in the enclosure I formatted to standard NFTS. After plugging it in........ nothing happened. Nothing beside the enclosure becoming quite warm. After some research, I finally ended up finding out from a review on amazon where I had gotten the enclosure from that you have to plug the drive into your Xbox through standard USB, format it to hold Xbox games and not just media, and then re-install into enclosure. After doing so and plugging in, I finally got something on the screen..... an error message saying that the storage drive isn't an "official Xbox drive". I was quite upset and immediately jumped over to this forum. I have never posted here and in fact had to make an account to do so. So, recap this with me. I bought a special M.2 and attempted to replace original storage drive, even going through hoops such as extracting an moving over the simple 1mb file that marries that SSD to the Xbox it is installed into. Found that it is possible, even with a drive of a different make/model, but it has to be the same size drive. Left SSD in desk drawer (because what OTHER use do you need for a 1tb 2230 drive) until having this revelation. Then, buy enclosure to try to install into storage expansion slot, only for Microsoft to tell me to f*ck myself. Another side note, the reason you can even find these CFe to M.2 enclosures is (just my luck) because doing exactly what I did worked.... before the last update where they patched that. So, in the end I am out $115 for this stupid special SSD (which I will say was a splurge for me), $30 for the enclosure, and I still am stuck with the pitiful 364gb of internal storage for Series games (which I will note doesn't even have enough room for Modern Warfare II and Forza Horizon 5). In my opinion this is complete crap and nearly wants to make me throw my console in the trash. And before anyone suggests that I just switch to PC, I have both, I just sometimes like the simplicity of booting up the Xbox and being able to immediately hop into a game (love quick resume). I would really like to know if anybody has some kind of logical reasoning behind why Microsoft is doing this besides for monopolizing their storage to make more money. I don't understand why they wont let someone take the risk of installing their own drive. I would totally understand a warning when its plugged in, something along the lines of "hey, this isn't one of our drives, if your stuff gets lost or you experience lag, not on us", but entirely blocking the drive seams outrageous to me. So please, if i could get some light shed on a good reasoning behind this, I would absolutely appreciate it. But for now ill go pout in by cheap-o corner and cry about how money-hungry Microsoft is.

[Hinjima]

11 minutes ago, QuintonKKoenig said:

So, due to the recent release of some games that are taking up a significant amount of space on the internal storage on my Xbox Series S, I recently (and I emphasize recently, due to their previously outrageous price) looked into the proprietary storage upgrade. Now, being the cheap-o that I am I attempted to make my own first. I have an existing 1tb 2230 M.2 from when I had tried upgrading the internal storage on said console (do NOT even get me started on that one) so I bought an CFe to M.2 adapter. Before I mounted the SSD in the enclosure I formatted to standard NFTS. After plugging it in........ nothing happened. Nothing beside the enclosure becoming quite warm. After some research, I finally ended up finding out from a review on amazon where I had gotten the enclosure from that you have to plug the drive into your Xbox through standard USB, format it to hold Xbox games and not just media, and then re-install into enclosure. After doing so and plugging in, I finally got something on the screen..... an error message saying that the storage drive isn't an "official Xbox drive". I was quite upset and immediately jumped over to this forum. I have never posted here and in fact had to make an account to do so. So, recap this with me. I bought a special M.2 and attempted to replace original storage drive, even going through hoops such as extracting an moving over the simple 1mb file that marries that SSD to the Xbox it is installed into. Found that it is possible, even with a drive of a different make/model, but it has to be the same size drive. Left SSD in desk drawer (because what OTHER use do you need for a 1tb 2230 drive) until having this revelation. Then, buy enclosure to try to install into storage expansion slot, only for Microsoft to tell me to f*ck myself. Another side note, the reason you can even find these CFe to M.2 enclosures is (just my luck) because doing exactly what I did worked.... before the last update where they patched that. So, in the end I am out $115 for this stupid special SSD (which I will say was a splurge for me), $30 for the enclosure, and I still am stuck with the pitiful 364gb of internal storage for Series games (which I will note doesn't even have enough room for Modern Warfare II and Forza Horizon 5). In my opinion this is complete crap and nearly wants to make me throw my console in the trash. And before anyone suggests that I just switch to PC, I have both, I just sometimes like the simplicity of booting up the Xbox and being able to immediately hop into a game (love quick resume). I would really like to know if anybody has some kind of logical reasoning behind why Microsoft is doing this besides for monopolizing their storage to make more money. I don't understand why they wont let someone take the risk of installing their own drive. I would totally understand a warning when its plugged in, something along the lines of "hey, this isn't one of our drives, if your stuff gets lost or you experience lag, not on us", but entirely blocking the drive seams outrageous to me. So please, if i could get some light shed on a good reasoning behind this, I would absolutely appreciate it. But for now ill go pout in by cheap-o corner and cry about how money-hungry Microsoft is.

You wouldn't happen to have a TLDR of this would you?

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

You wouldn't happen to have a TLDR of this would you?

he bought a cheapo ssd adapter to get around some Microsoft proprietary bs for their Xbox console, not realizing that they technically could actually ban him for the attempt, while *also* being to cheap going to a lawyer and sue Microsoft for this obviously anti-consumer and possibly anticompetitive practice. 

 

Hope i got the gist of it...

[BiotechBen]

5 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

You wouldn't happen to have a TLDR of this would you?

Angry about Xbox series console requiring proprietary storage expansion, spent money without doing the research to find out if it would work first. Assumed that because it worked that way on previous gen it would work now.

[Ertman]

Don’t forget they Spent nearly $150 to save $200, but didn’t even do that.

 

I get it, the proprietary storage is BS, but it’s hard to blame MS for wasting your $145, that’s on you. You can blame them for the high cost of storage though.

 

I don't have a Series Xbox, but I always thought the add on storage was supposed to be like a storage/memory card hybrid, maybe allowing you to bring it to other consoles? The proprietary limitations might be a way to avoid hacks, etc? They were also probably trying to dumb it down for consumers.

I think they should have had some kind of upgradable internal storage like the PS5 where it would wipe the drive and install system files on it.

[BrandonLatzig]

15 hours ago, Ertman said:

I always thought the add on storage was supposed to be like a storage/memory card hybrid

I never heard that, though I will say this.
You can just use a external hdd or ssd for game library and transfer games in and out of it. Its annoying, but its much faster than uninstall and reinstalling games

[BrandonLatzig]

15 hours ago, Ertman said:

I think they should have had some kind of upgradable internal storage like the PS5 where it would wipe the drive and install system files on it.

My ONLY reasoning (that isnt just they wanted more money)
Is that they didn't want people to buy the cheapest (and slowest) ssds with big space and then complain that their console runs like crap

[demonix00]

On 11/7/2023 at 10:01 PM, QuintonKKoenig said:

So, due to the recent release of some games that are taking up a significant amount of space on the internal storage on my Xbox Series S, I recently (and I emphasize recently, due to their previously outrageous price) looked into the proprietary storage upgrade. Now, being the cheap-o that I am I attempted to make my own first. I have an existing 1tb 2230 M.2 from when I had tried upgrading the internal storage on said console (do NOT even get me started on that one) so I bought an CFe to M.2 adapter. Before I mounted the SSD in the enclosure I formatted to standard NFTS. After plugging it in........ nothing happened. Nothing beside the enclosure becoming quite warm. After some research, I finally ended up finding out from a review on amazon where I had gotten the enclosure from that you have to plug the drive into your Xbox through standard USB, format it to hold Xbox games and not just media, and then re-install into enclosure. After doing so and plugging in, I finally got something on the screen..... an error message saying that the storage drive isn't an "official Xbox drive". I was quite upset and immediately jumped over to this forum. I have never posted here and in fact had to make an account to do so. So, recap this with me. I bought a special M.2 and attempted to replace original storage drive, even going through hoops such as extracting an moving over the simple 1mb file that marries that SSD to the Xbox it is installed into. Found that it is possible, even with a drive of a different make/model, but it has to be the same size drive. Left SSD in desk drawer (because what OTHER use do you need for a 1tb 2230 drive) until having this revelation. Then, buy enclosure to try to install into storage expansion slot, only for Microsoft to tell me to f*ck myself. Another side note, the reason you can even find these CFe to M.2 enclosures is (just my luck) because doing exactly what I did worked.... before the last update where they patched that. So, in the end I am out $115 for this stupid special SSD (which I will say was a splurge for me), $30 for the enclosure, and I still am stuck with the pitiful 364gb of internal storage for Series games (which I will note doesn't even have enough room for Modern Warfare II and Forza Horizon 5). In my opinion this is complete crap and nearly wants to make me throw my console in the trash. And before anyone suggests that I just switch to PC, I have both, I just sometimes like the simplicity of booting up the Xbox and being able to immediately hop into a game (love quick resume). I would really like to know if anybody has some kind of logical reasoning behind why Microsoft is doing this besides for monopolizing their storage to make more money. I don't understand why they wont let someone take the risk of installing their own drive. I would totally understand a warning when its plugged in, something along the lines of "hey, this isn't one of our drives, if your stuff gets lost or you experience lag, not on us", but entirely blocking the drive seams outrageous to me. So please, if i could get some light shed on a good reasoning behind this, I would absolutely appreciate it. But for now ill go pout in by cheap-o corner and cry about how money-hungry Microsoft is.

Those cheapo CFe adapters are not going to work with a majority of M.2 drives since those that state that they work with xbox series consoles only mention one model of M.2 SSD that works and while the seagate storage expansion cards were (and still are if you go directly from microsoft) a rip off but some places have dropped their prices to be in line with the WD black C50 storage expansion cards.

 

However, the storage expansion cards aren't the only way to have extra space for games as xbox one games along with the entire back compat catalogue and a select few series games can be run from a USB drive, but do make sure that it's an SSD to make sure there aren't any issues that could lead to a crash or the console crapping its pants and hard shutting down (a Silicon power A60 2TB M.2 along with an external enclosure would cost less then a seagate 2TB storage expansion card, but it would only be for stuff MS deems able to run via USB even though USB3 SSD's can probably get more then enough throughput to run series games).

[BrandonLatzig]

2 hours ago, demonix00 said:

but do make sure that it's an SSD to make sure there aren't any issues that could lead to a crash or the console crapping its pants and hard shutting down

I will say that seagate's 8tb hub works plenty fine, been running it for several years at this point and I recommend it for bulk storage

[Ertman]

On 11/8/2023 at 1:10 PM, BrandonLatzig said:

My ONLY reasoning (that isnt just they wanted more money)
Is that they didn't want people to buy the cheapest (and slowest) ssds with big space and then complain that their console runs like crap

Its not too dissimilar to the hDDs on the 360, and its actually interesting functionality.With the previous Gen and the PS5, it requires opening the console and installing the drive that would likely require a format and reinstall, unless previously in that particular system. The expansion storage cards can be taken to other consoles (such ans a friends house, or other family members) and you sign and play using the games on that card. You can't really just force people to format every time they switch consoles, kind of defeats the purpose of the expansion storage.

 

the proprietary form factor sucks, but there isn't even a consume standard for that kind of storage.

 

It's not too dissimilar to the hDDs on the 360, so there's definitely a functionality and DRM aspect to it along with the $$$.

[Mavrick2k]

Does it stink, yes. Does it make sense, yes. Should you have done your homework before buying crap to bypass something, for sure.  10 minutes of research would have prevented all of this.  It has been gone over time and time again. Even beyond the 1 drive that works the type of drive needed is still going to be almost as expensive. not all m.2 drives are the same and what the series machines needs is a fast Gen4 with certain lane requirements.  If you don't understand the tech and don't do the research of those that do then do not complain about your results. 

Series games are designed to run with certain specs a certain way.  Running on anything else will change targeted performance and degrade the experience which could turn people away from games or publishers or cause back lash on the console itself.  It is not just a money grab tactic but optics and PR for both the system and its software teams and game publishers for a consistent experience. 

The bottom line is if you want to play around and use whatever equipment you have laying around and tinker then yes go to PC.  Game Pass is on both and most of the games are on it all. PC actually would have more options for you game wise and you can use slow storage if you want.