Western Digital’s My Passport X adds a lot of storage to your Xbox One, and looks cute in your living room to boot.
While Microsoft has just recently announced a 1TB Xbox One bundle, that’s not a lot of use if you’re an existing Xbox One owner. The default model sold up until now ran with a 500GB hard drive, which sounds like quite a lot. The issue is that a lot of games not only rely on rather large patches, but also install significant quantities of their on-disc content direct to that 500GB of storage, and that’s leaving aside the issue of downloading entirely digital content. It’s the well worn maxim that if you give a user a certain amount of storage space, they’ll find a way to fill it.
Thankfully, Microsoft makes it pretty easy to fix this particular problem, because the Xbox One can take external storage to bulk up the quantity of content available to you. If it’s USB 2.0, you can use it to store video or music content to play back through your Xbox Onem but if it’s USB 3.0 and at least 256GB or larger, you can use it to store Xbox One games content on.
That’s the market that Western Digital’s My Passport X is aimed at. It’s a 2TB USB 3.0 drive in a smooth black finish intended to replicate the look of the Xbox One, although naturally enough it’s quite a bit smaller.
Setup of the My Passport X is quite simple, but then it should be, because a lot of the installation duties are handled at the Xbox One end. Depending on how you have your console set up, getting access to the USB ports might be the hardest part. The My Passport X is entirely bus powered, so all you need to do is plug it in and power up your Xbox One.
For a drive specifically aimed at the Xbox One market, it’s curious to note that the My Passport X isn’t pre-formatted for Xbox One use. As such, you can copy video or music content to it from your PC or Mac and quite merrily use it immediately, but if you do want to use it for games storage, you’re going to have to format it from the Xbox One. Bear in mind that this is a full format, so it’s either a games storage device, or a media storage device with direct PC accessibility.
The process of switching files over to the My Passport X is a little fiddly, but that’s down to the Xbox One UI rather than anything Western Digital has opted to do. Once you’ve transferred titles to the My Passport X, it’s an entirely seamless and invisible process to access them for gameplay. Transfer of existing installed titles can take a little while depending on file size, but it’s USB 3.0, so it’s reasonably fast, and in typical Xbox One fashion, for some titles you can start playing while they’re copying over.
Tiny white flashing light? Check.
That’s the features list sorted, then.
The My Passport X certainly fulfills its promise, but there is one small catch that’s worth bearing in mind. Its Australian RRP is $199 for 2TB of storage, but all it’s doing is complying with the guidelines for an Xbox One compatible storage device. All you need for that is USB 3.0 speed and at least 256GB of capacity, and you don’t have to look very far to find 2TB USB 3.0 drives for less than $199.
Not all of them are bus-powered, but for many users you’re likely to simply plug it in, hide it away and use its storage rather than show it off or take it fully portable. You don’t specifically need an Xbox One labelled drive to use with the Xbox One. As such, while it’s nicely portable and I certainly can’t fault its performance, it’s not doing anything that any other USB 3.0 2TB drive wouldn’t also do with an Xbox One. I’d suggest shopping around for your gaming storage needs.