A user of the China Bilibili forums showed a custom unit that serves to expand the storage of the Xbox Series S and Series X, avoiding Microsoft’s proprietary expander.
Microsoft consoles were released alongside a proprietary SSD that allows you to increase your console’s storage. This drive is manufactured by Seagate and offers 1 TB of storage for a price of US $ 219.99. This price is a bit high compared to a normal 1TB SSD.
A solution to avoid using the proprietary SSD was discovered among the members of the Chinese forums. It turns out that the Seagate memory expander uses a modified CFE adapter and converted from 3rd generation to 4th. This means that while the adapter is being modified, technically any NVMe can work on consoles.
A user bought a CFE adapter from a DSLR camera store. These adapters are rare to find, but one can find them in these types of stores. It also used an NVMe M.2 Western Digital CH SN530 SSD, which was mounted on the rear of the adapter. Technically normal SSDs could also be used although we could not mount them on the adapter. But anyway this solution also works.
Unfortunately the adapter itself is limited to a 1700MB / s read speed and a 1480MB / s read speed. It’s just not worth investing in a top-of-the-line SSD for this use. Buying an SSD that supports these speeds is enough. There are plenty of 1TB SSDs that are worth less than $ 100, which is less than half what the official Xbox Series expander is worth.
The assembly process is quite simple. Just connecting the disk to the adapter, and the adapter to the Xbox Series is enough. From what it seems the disk works perfectly, although there are some problems related to formatting. According to some users, once we use it on consoles, it will no longer work as it should on other devices, so if you try, keep in mind to invest in an SSD just for that use.
What do you think of the method the internet discovered to expand storage? Would you test it on your Xbox Series S and Series X?
Source: WCCFTech | Bilibili