Xbox One games are enormous. Red Dead Redemption 2 alone is 107 GB. If you have a data cap, downloading the same game multiple times is wasteful. Instead, transfer your games between consoles using external drives to save data.
Copy Your Games to Save Time and Data
When giving someone a new Xbox One, we recommend installing games for them first. Whether it’s a Christmas morning surprise for your kids or a birthday gift for your spouse, their games will be ready to play immediately. When you play an Xbox game for the first time, the console immediately rips most of the disc to the hard drive. Your Xbox then downloads everything else it needs to play the game. Incredibly, that additional content can lead to games 100 GB or larger such as Final Fantasy 15, Gears of War 4, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
If you have more than Xbox One, installing your games on each could mean downloading them multiple times but depending on your internet speeds that may take a long time. Worse yet, if you have a data cap, you risk going over. For example, Comcast enforces a 1 TB (1000 GB) data cap, and a downloading a single Xbox One game can use a tenth of that. Thankfully, Microsoft added external hard drive support for Xbox One. And while you usually would use this to expand storage, you can also use it to move or copy a game from one Xbox to another.
This is also helpful if you’re upgrading to an Xbox One X from an original Xbox One or Xbox One S.
How To Transfer Every Game at Once (Or Just Some)
Transferring your games is a pretty straightforward affair. First, plug in your external drive you plan to use, and format it if prompted.
Warning: The formatting process will erase the data on the drive.
Microsoft requires you use a USB 3.0 drive with at least 256 GB of storage. Given the sheer size of games, we recommend getting at least a 1 TB drive.
From the Xbox Home screen, press the Xbox button on your controller (the circular button with the Xbox logo that lights up). Choose the Settings gear to the far right, followed by “Settings.”
