New Xbox Console Update Essentially Removes External Storage Drive Limits

In a welcome update for Xbox owners, Microsoft has announced that its consoles will soon support external USB drives that are larger than 16TB in size. This feature is now available for members of the Xbox Insiders program to test--specifically, members who have unlocked the Alpha Skip-Ahead tier--and is expected to roll out to the general public in the weeks to come.

"We are enabling support for external USB drives larger than 16TB, so you can be sure your favorite games are always ready to play," Microsoft explained in a blog post. "Newly formatted drives that are larger than 16TB will be formatted with multiple partitions to utilize all available space for games and apps. These will appear as multiple devices in the storage devices list."

Anyone who already has an external hard drive larger than 16TB that has been formatted will be unaffected by this change, Microsoft added, noting that these storage devices will need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support. It's worth noting that games optimized for Xbox Series X|S consoles cannot be played from an external USB drive, but these can be used to store the game data and then moved onto the console's SSD or an NvME SSD expansion card.

A new external drive-limit wasn't mentioned in the blog post, so if you feel like going all out, it does seem like you can make use of something like a Seagate 24TB external hard drive to keep backups of all your games.

With game install sizes steadily increasing over the years, this is welcome news to anyone looking to keep a massive library of games that can be accessed at any time. While 16TB is more than enough for a lot of indie and last-gen games--newer games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Stalker 2: Shadow of Chornobyl can take up a lot of space.

In other Xbox news, the first Developer Direct livestream of 2025 kicks off on January 23. South of Midnight and Doom: The Dark Ages are some of the games that will be featured, and Xbox is also teasing a mystery game for the show. Game Pass subscribers can also check out all the new games coming to and leaving the service this month.