Xbox Series S uses removable M.2 SSD, but upgrade is unlikely to be easy
Thanks to the analysis of the Xbox Series S game console, it became known that the console is equipped with an M.2 NVMe drive. In theory, this allows it to be replaced with a more capacious media without the need to buy an official external expansion card for the Xbox Series X and Series S worth $ 220.
Unfortunately, there are no details about whether the 512 GB set-top box’s own NVMe drive has software binding to the Xbox Series S yet, so we would not recommend trying to change it. At the same time, the disassembly of the console revealed that it uses a Western Digital SN530 SSD in M.2 2230 format as a storage medium, which makes it much shorter than most consumer solutions in M.2 2280 format. However, buy a compact M.2 drive 2230 won’t be difficult.
The analysis showed that the drive was broken down into six subsections: User Content, System Software, System Update, System Update 2, and Temporary Files. What the sixth subsection is used for is unknown, since it is hidden.
A search through the company’s catalog reports that the Western Digital SN530 SSD has sequential read and write speeds of 2,400 and 1,750 MB / s. It also indicates that in a series of similar commercial drives WD IX SN530 there are models with a volume of 1 and 2 TB of the same format and size.
According to Overclock3d.net, Microsoft could have released an Xbox Series S with a smaller drive to leave room for a version with a larger SSD in the future.
For now, the official and completely safe way to expand the game space on Xbox Series X and Series S consoles is to use a Microsoft-certified 1TB Seagate external solid-state drive. But it is not cheap, so the services of craftsmen for transferring data from the original SSD console to a third-party, more capacious one should be in demand. And offers of such services will certainly appear.
