Your Xbox One external HDD will immediately work on Xbox Series X

No formatting necessary

The past few weeks have been rife with riveting Xbox Series X storage stories. First we found out that the proprietary external SSD will be rather expensive, nearly half the price of the console. But, maybe it’s not a huge deal because some transfer time tests revealed that the Xbox Series X is pretty quick about moving installs from an external HDD to the internal SSD. Maybe you can manage.

For people planning on the latter option, here’s some good news: The external HDD that you use for your Xbox One will immediately and automatically work on Xbox Series X. Just unplug it from the old machine and plug it into the new machine. Xbox’s Major Nelson confirmed this on Twitter: 

Just unplug it from your One X, then plug unto your XSX or XSS – and you are done.

— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) September 30, 2020

That’s a best-case scenario. There’s no necessary formatting which would probably require redownloading everything on the hard drive. It’ll just work after plugging it in. Then, you’re left to juggle install locations, but with an extra $220 in your pocket.