Xbox will soon let you use external USB drives larger than 16 TB

Microsoft has just rolled out a new update for Xbox Insiders. And with that, folks in the invite-only Alpha-Skip Ahead Ring can use an external USB drive larger than the current 16 TB cap.

The Redmond tech giant describes that these drives will use multiple partitions to maximize storage space, and they’ll appear as separate devices in the storage list.

Most Xbox consoles come with either 1 TB or 500 GB internal storage, and with most games these days taking up at least 50 GB or over, this is a win-win for Xbox players.

Before this, Xbox had a size cap of 16 TB for external drives connected via the console’s USB 3.0. Plus, you could not connect more than three external drives total at the same time.

“Drives greater than 16TB that have already been formatted will be unaffected by this change and would need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives,” Microsoft says.

Still from the update, Microsoft also added a sale badge for discounted games that appear directly on your Home screen. It also brings a lot of fixes here and there, including improvements for Narrator readout in Settings, better performance in media apps, and updates to local language displays.

This comes as Microsoft is pushing for an Xbox-less Xbox experience. Or, in its own words, “Play Xbox without an Xbox.”

And it’s not just some buzzwords, too. With Xbox Cloud Gaming, which lets you play games even after they leave Game Pass, you can play Xbox games on your laptops, Android or Apple phones, and even smart TVs. That way, since everything is handled in the cloud, you won’t need to worry about storage or even minimum PC specifications anymore.