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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AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Good thing it's not a 3TB drive. My friend's 3TB Seagate external died in the middle of a copy operation last week Wednesday... :-(hughlle - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Your point being? That 3tb seagate drives are inherently risky because your friend once had one that failed?ddriver - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Seagate seem to be the champs when it comes to failure rates the past years. WD REDs seem to be a serious contender though...Samus - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I've always favored WD over Seagate, but there is no denying Seagate had some revolutionary drives in their day starting with the 7200.7, a model I still haven't seen a single failure from, even after over a decade of service.Recently, though, I agree with you, I've seen more Seagate failures than other manufactures, but they are almost always external 3.5" drives.
StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
I bought four seagate drives to throw into RAID a few years back. All failed within a 6 month period..I just assumed something happened during shipping or I got a bad batch... Got Western Digital and haven't looked back.
Had a few Samsung drives too before they sold out, they still tick along perfectly fine. :)
This drive though is over priced and ugly, what pushed them to go with that green colour when the machine is completely black, with black controllers? Buying a non-xbox branded drive would actually match the console better from a colour and aesthetics perspective.
khanikun - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link
I have the opposite issue. Most of my WD drives fail within the first year or two, while my Seagate drives hum along well into the 4-5 year mark.Now I've bought Seagate external drives and ripped the drive out to put into a system (can be as much as $50 cheaper over retail). Those seem to fail in 2-3 years.
Miller1331 - Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - link
I have personally had 2 die on me within the last 6 months, 1tb and 3tb 2.5 drivesAtwaterFS - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
This is actually backed up by empirical data: Google "backblaze seagate 3TB"Also seagate drives overall fail more often than other manufacturers - also backed up by other studies (and my own experiences)
Samus - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Backblaze studies only consider a single configuration: bulk cold storage. Their data isn't entirely applicable to desktop, mobile, or server usage scenario.It is still relevant, and important, and actually fantastic they provide that level of transparency, but Backblaze has a few flaws in their data collection. For one, Backblaze has an interesting history of sourcing drives from various vendors, many of which came from "shucked" drives from Best Buy and Costco locations across the country from 2010-2011. Shucked drives often have firmware that is calibrated for external drive usage scenario (occasional read/write, non-24/7 use) and when looking at the Backblaze data, they fail to provide firmware, just generational model numbers.
Seagate is notorious for using multiple firmware configurations within the same model drives.
Reflex - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
This here. I appreciate the Backblaze data, they are one of the few putting real world data out there. I think they definitely identified an issue with the 3TB class of drives, and especially with Seagate.That said, they are only testing one scenario, and it is not one that is terribly relevant to most end users. That needs to be kept in mind when looking at their data.