Seagate Announces 2TB Game Drive for Xbox At Gamescom 2015
by Brett Howse on August 5, 2015 3:01 AM EST
Today Seagate is announcing a new product aimed squarely at the console market, and specifically at the Xbox brand. Seagate partnered with Microsoft to create the Xbox branded Game Drive for Xbox. Console games have been getting larger and larger, with games like Call of Duty coming in around 55 GB with expansions and add-ons. The original Xbox One was released with only 500 GB of internal storage, and of that, only about 360 GB is usable.
Seagate has a solution, and one that comes at a perfect time since the Xbox One is gaining the ability to record television, and that can burn up a lot of space in a hurry. The 2TB Game Drive for Xbox is a USB 3.0 based external drive. Now, before we get any further, it needs to be pointed out that the Xbox One will work with any USB 3.0 based hard drive, but Seagate is the only company to provide one that is licensed and endorsed with the Xbox branding.
The distinctive Xbox green means that you will never be in doubt what this drive is for, and the capacity should let you store around 50 or more games on it, and then you can take them with you if you need to play on another console.
The 2TB model will have a MSRP of $109.99, and be available from GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon, and other retailers. If you want to add some Xbox branding to your storage, the price premium over a less attractive model should not be too much.
Update: Seagate has apparently worked to create custom firmware for this drive for console gaming workloads. What that means is pretty unclear so we'll test the device out and see how it performs Seagate has clarified that although they worked with Microsoft on certification and endorsement the firmware has not been tweaked. My appologies for the misunderstanding.
Source: Seagate
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eek2121 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
I disagree with this, i think the backblaze scenario is perfectly valid. In general, i've had bad experience with seagate drives. I have some WD black 2 terabyte drives I bought many years ago that are still going strong. All 3 of my seagate drives have shown issues. If you look at shrinking warranties over the past few years, you can tell right away who makes crap drives. I try to only go with drives that have a 5-10 year warranty.eek2121 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
Oh and to add to this, both my 2 TB WD black edition hard drives have been in a dual drive enclosure for 4.5 years. Not a single issue with either one of them.nyarrgh - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link
I've had 6 X 2 TB drives, 6 X 3TB drives and now 6 X 5 TB drives in RAID or JBOD external boxes. All from Seagate External drives I opened up. I've had 1 x 2TB drives go bad, 3 3TB Drives, and no 5TB Drives, but the 5 TB ones are relatively new. This sort of correlates with BackBlaze's experience with thousands of drives : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-fail...Of course this article is all about notebook sized hard drives, so very different. 3TB 2.5 drives are still rare
mszew - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
So Seagate with cooperation with Microsoft managed to create green plastic case for one of its crappy drives. Astonishing. I look forward for time when Seagate will be the leading manufacturer of plastic cases for SSDs.Flunk - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Seagate actually owns Sandforce now so they actually bought in to the SSD race.Gunbuster - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
AKA a totally standard USB HDD. Way to be on the cutting edge SeagateGunbuster - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Not to mention it doesn't even match the design aesthetic of the XB1...06GTOSC - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Yeah I'd think you'd want a standing drive that sits next to the XB1. Not just a green drive you lay next to it.cashnmillions - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
So it is endorsed and licensed through Microsoft, does that mean anything? Does it do anything more than any other external hard drive?Brett Howse - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I'm told it has custom firmware for use as a console drive (updated the post) but not sure what that means so we're going to test it and find out.