After being thoroughly fed-up with having to manage the ludicrously – small internal drive of my XBOX ONE, the June 2014 system update that included the option to add USB elements storage or external storage was extremely welcome. So, I decided to treat myself to an external HDD, and after a bit of research, decided on this offering from Western Digital.
WD 3 TB USB Elements Storage Review
Setting-up was very easy
Desktop Hard Drive for Plug-and-Play, This HDD has many possible uses, but this review is from the standpoint of using it as external storage on the XBOX ONE console.
Once connected, the unit was immediately recognized by the console and formatting it for use take just a few seconds. Presumably, this is an anti-piracy measure to prevent hackers and modern accessing game data and save files. If, like me, solely intend to use it as extra storage for a games console and nothing else, then this is not a problem, but I figured it was worth mentioning in case potential buyers would expect to find multiple uses for the drive.
The Designed
The case is visually appealing and more interesting than a generic box shape. Actually, with it’s curved front and the position of the LED, it’s quite reminiscent of the original model XBOX 360 when stood vertically, just on a smaller scale. Functionality is excellent – Copying, moving and deleting games to and from the drive is nice and quick and the device is very quiet and will enter a stand-by mode (which is silent) when the console is switched off.
Along with increasing available storage space, the HDD will also significantly reduce loading times of any games installed. I’ve seen conflicting information regarding the spin speed of this model, whether it’s 5400 or 7200rpm, but regardless, games do load faster than they do when installed on the internal 500GB drive. This is especially noticeable on laborious titles such as
Forza Motorsport 5 and Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Overall, I’ve been delighted with my purchase so far and would highly recommend it to anyone else in the market for additional storage for their XBOX ONE.
We gave the WD 3 TB USB Elements Storage
