WD - D30 Game Drive for Xbox 1TB External USB Type C Portable SSD - Black

This WD NVME SSD is an excellent companion to the Series X. Super small footprint and plenty of storage for your media and games. Inside the package you get the Hard Drive, USB A to C cord, Stand and the usual paperwork. This HDD is small! I placed it next to my PC mouse for reference. Setting up was a breeze. HDD "clips" securely to the stand and just plug in the USB-C to the SSD and USB A to the Series X/S. The console immediately recognized the storage device for me and prompted me to format it for use. Performance is great. I freed up my internal storage of all my Game Pass games by moving it straight to the WD Black. Though, when I moved CoD to the HDD, I couldn't play it. It would tell me Game can't be played so I ended up moving it back to internal storage. Seems like newer Series X/S games must be played off the internal drive though can xfer to the WD if you need to free up space for later use. Every other game I DLed from Game Pass played perfectly without a hitch. Loading times seems exactly the same as it was being played from the internal drive itself. If you need extra storage space for your downloaded games, this WD Black is awesome. Highly would recommend for your digital library. Transfer times are FAST depending on the size of your files.

WD is pushing hard into the external USB storage gaming market, especially for consoles since games are so big nowadays, typically 50GB but up to 100GB for some titles. Even though you have 800GB-1TB of fast NVME storage, that's still not enough if you have a decent game library or have a few games you play frequently along with a few you are just playing through. Enter the ability to add affordable, yet still faster than download speed storage devices like the WD Black D30. There are some limitations on what games you can play off of the external storage device, it seems like most XBox Series S/X optimized titles cannot be played directly from the external D30, but XBox One titles an be. This is most likely due to the way these next-gen consoles architect gameplay around the extremely fast storage subsystems and the ability to seamlessly stream content and assets. In terms of performance and compatibility, I actually hooked up the D30 to my PC laptop as well just to verify the speeds and also compare against some other storage methods I have access to. The internal m.2 NVME SSD of the Dell XPS obviously blew away the externals at 2.8GB/s but that was to be expected. The D30 came in just as advertised at 900MB/s Seq. Read/Write speeds. It also stacked up favorably to the more expensive WD Black P50 which came in around 1000MB/s Read/Write, albeit part of this is due to the fact my laptop does not have the USB 3.2 2x2 required to get the full 2000MB/s advertised speeds. Also of note, this D30 drive can also be used with the PS5 and seems identical to the unbranded version of the D30, other than the XBox branding as well as a trial key for XBox Game Pass Ultimate, the only downside is you need to format the drive to work with the PS5 while the XBox and PC are interchangeable without having to format. In terms of build quality, the D30 is light and rugged feeling but slightly bulkier in width compared to the P50, which is metal, heavier and more premium feeling. Still, for the difference in price I would probably go for the D30 in 2TB over the faster P50 in 1TB if I had to choose. 2TB of fast SSD storage means you can quickly shuttle your primary games over to your XBox's primary storage and move them back when you're not playing, and you've nearly tripled your total storage in the meantime. Overall you can't go wrong with this fast method of storage and while you can get an HDD version from WD with a LOT more storage space, you're not going to get as much performance or copy speeds to/from the spinning HDD platform.

This Western Digital_Black D30 is a great addition to your Xbox storage. The drive itself is very small, it kind of looks like a little container box. It is so small it will fit in the palm of your hand. It can feel a little bit bulky due to its width but overall is relatively small. Now don’t be fooled by its size because this thing performs like a champ. This is a 1TB gaming SSD drive with NVMe technology rated up to 900MB/s designed for Xbox including the X/S . It connects via USB-C and the other end that goes to the console is USB-A. This a simple plug and play solution but it was required for the drive to be formatted by the console to be used for gaming. I can honestly say I did not notice any difference in the loading time compared to the internal drive. I played Cyberpunk and Overwatch without a hinch. Overwatch took about 4 seconds until I saw the first logo. The quick resume with the Cyberpunk was almost instantly from this drive. Once you plugin to the Xbox you can set it up to be the default installation drive. I did get an error with the Latest Call of Duty Black Ops “This game cannot be played from external drive”. I was not able to play this game from this drive. There are also few games that will display a warning banner stating the “newer games need faster storage” when you try to install them directly from the store. Most were series X/S games. Maybe that’s why I wasn't able to play the COD my version is X/S. i also noticed when I transferred the COD 130GB to the drive it took approx 30 min when initially said about 7 min and half. When I transferred it back to the console it took about 8 min. Overall this is a great expansion storage for your Xbox and the loading time I will say is on par with the internal drive. It is very portable, fast and with the 1TB capacity you can install a decent library of games. In the box you get the drive, USB-C cable, stand, manuals and a month free of Xbox game pass code.

Right out of the box, the drive is ready to use. I'm connecting to a Xbox Series X console, and once plugged in using the included USB cable, the Xbox recognized the drive and asks if you want to use it for game data, or media data (like pictures, songs, etc.) I'm using mine for game data, so after one click of the button, the drive was ready to use. The drive has a very minimal footprint, super small compared to standard non-NVME external drives of the same storage capacity. The speed of the drive is outstanding, I was able to move/copy/save game data of multiple GBs from my internal drive to the WD drive and back again at blazing fast transfer speeds. One thing you need to understand, is that you cannot play Series X games directly from this drive. The Series X will only "Play" games from its internal drive or from the official Xbox expansion drives that use the same architecture. A drive like this is perfect for storing your apps or older games. You can also play your older games directly from this drive, and in some cases I find the performance is actually better. I was playing Mortal Kombat XL and NASCAR Heat 5 directly from this drive, and I found the load up and wait times were shorter compared to playing directly from the internal drive. I also found that running apps directly from this drive seem to do the same, shorter load times, so bonus!!!

Admittedly the games for XBox these days are just beyond huge, rivaling and sometimes surpassing the size of their PC equivalents, so it's easy to find yourself running out of storage but not wanting to remove a game just to install something new. This is a concern because most external drives of any reasonable size are slow and with the performance one expects from the XBox, it's hard to live up to that performance with an external drive that's anything other than SSD with USB 3.2 Gen 2 performance. Enter the WD_BLACK 1TB external USB-C drive. This really is the solution to running out of disk space but not wanting to remove some games to install others. In terms of packaging and looks, it's actually very very small, due to the fact that it is an nVME SSD on the inside so it's smaller than even all standard SSDs. It comes with a vertical stand which is really personal preference on whether you want to use it. I've included a picture of it next to a standard Blu-Ray case to show the size. The performance from the drive is phenomenal. I connected it to my PC just for benchmarking purposes and it consistently reaches very near the advertised performance numbers, mine topping out right around 893MB/s. Included is a screenshot of expected performance numbers. It's really quite good for an external drive. In terms of gaming performance, I connected it to my XBox One S and loaded it up with Plants vs Zombies Battle for Neighborville which, to me, has always had somewhat of an obscene load time. I can tell you that this drive is at least equal in terms of loading and performance with the onboard drive in a real-world type scenario. In timing the loading of the game the difference was negligible as to not even be able really see the difference of the external vs internal drive. Really this is the solution to an undersized Xbox drive and not wanting to constantly reinstall games, particularly with the size of the installs and downloads these days. I strongly recommend this to anyone in the market for an external drive.

--- SETUP --- The WD Black SSD drive for Xbox is quick to install but requires formatting prior to your first use. After turning on your Xbox, it will ask you if you want to use it for: media storage or for Xbox games. Choose Xbox Games and you’ll be set in about 1 minute or less. --- FEATURES --- This SSD features 10 Gbps for quick transfer of large files, a USB-C interface, 1 TB of storage, fast load times, and a mini-dock. It includes one month of Xbox Game Pass --- EXPECTATIONS --- - Saves Xbox Series X/S games but you can’t play them from the WD SSD drive. - Saves Xbox One X games and provides faster load times. - Can transfer games very fast from SSD to Xbox Internal storage. --- PERFORMANCE --- You can install Xbox Series X/S games, but they can’t be played off of the WD SSD drive. Only games installed on the Xbox Series X/S internal storage or in an official Xbox expansion card can play Series X/S games. The load times will be faster than using an external HDD, but not as fast as the internal Xbox storage. You also won’t get the benefits of optimized games Fallout 4 which now support 120 FPS. That being said, it is still great to have this external NVMe SSD storage because the Xbox’s internal storage is also NVMe. This means that the transfer speed between the two is amazingly fast. I was able to transfer 20 gigs of data (Vampyr game) in 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I set this SSD as my default installation for new downloads. This way, I can download or preload games that will be released soon and I can transfer them back and forth as needed. If you have fast internet speed, your game will download faster because it will be installed to the drive at a faster rate. Another great and undersold feature of this device is that, once formatted for Xbox, you can use it on any Xbox that you encounter. As a recent example, my friends invited us to game night at his house. He has an Xbox but doesn’t own the games I do, like all 7 Jack Box Party Pack games. Instead of carrying my Xbox or redownloading all 7 games to his, I just took the WD SSD and plugged it in his Xbox. We were ready to play faster than having to download the games. Essentially, this is now my travel companion for game nights. --- VALUE --- For the storage, speed, and portability, this is a great get. --- APPROVAL --- If you transfer games back and forth from your Xbox’s internal storage to an external one, it would be best to do it with this SSD which will improve your transfer speeds dramatically. If you plan to take your game to several Xbox’s, this is a mostly hassle-free solution.

The timing in getting this drive couldn't be more perfect. I already had an Xbox One X and was just able to get my hands on a Series X. So my plan was to copy most of what I had on the One X, then just leave it connected to the Series X, essentially doubling the storage capacity. Upon first hooking it up to the One X, it had a little trouble being recognized. I don't know if maybe I had a dusty usb port or what, but I had to unplug and replug the drive a couple times and into a different usb port before it recognized what it was and gave me the option to format it for Xbox. At that point is was quick and easy. Being new the formatting took seconds. Then from there I went through my games and apps and picked out everything I wanted to move. This was so much faster than re-downloading them on the Series X. One of these games was Forza Horizon 4, taking up 77.3 GB of space. I timed the transfer and it took just under 24 minutes to copy it to this drive. With everything copied over from the One X, it was time to setup my new Series X and then plug the drive in. The Series X recognized it first time and it worked right away. I was able to play the games I copied over from the One X directly from the drive on the Series X, no need to transfer them over. One thing I noticed though when playing a game or app from the drive is that you first get a pop-up saying the Xbox is getting it ready to play and may take a minute. It's really more of an annoyance though since by the time you can react to it, the game is ready. I'm not sure the cause of it but it only pops up when I'm playing something stored on this drive. Also, it seems to always be powered on. Even when my xbox is turned off (i keep it in energy saving mode versus the always ready mode), the green light on the drive slowly flashes. The flashing light and the look of it doesn't really matter much though. Since this is devoted to full time use with my Series X I just tuck it in the back so that you don't even really see it. Overall this is a great drive. It's fast, works as its supposed to, is cheaper than other options and literally doubles the storage of the Series X, which desperately needs it seeing as how large some of the games are like Forza and Flight Simulator. And as a bonus, it comes with a code for 1 month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and it's not just for first time users. I previously had Game Pass Ultimate since it first came out (and regular Game Pass before that), but just had to cancel it the other month to cut down on expenses. I put the enclosed code in and it gave me a full month.

This is a great "little" NVME Drive. WD case for this drive seems a bit larger then necessary, but considering this is for the XBOX portability isn't something you'd normally require. Installation of the Drive is easy enough and it allows you to expand the total storage of your XBOX quickly and easily. Had no issues and playing games off the drive seemed about what I'd get from the internal via direct storage. Overall not really noticing a difference. Before adding to my XBOX I did quickly test on my PC CrystalDiskMark. Drive via my USB 3 got excellent speeds and seemed as responsive as I'd expect for SSD via USB. I'm assuming on the XBOX which has direct storage API To call NVME storage more efficiently can maximize the speed. Overall if you want to add some extra space to your XBOX to try out all those fun GamePass games this is a great drive and easy to use.