When Microsoft announced the Xbox One some people were disappointed to learn that there was no user replaceable hard disk, whereas the PS4 makes things nice and simple by having a trapdoor for easy access. Once Xbox Ones started being taken apart after its big release it was found that inside that big black box was a standard 2.5-inch laptop hard disk, the likes of which can be bought from any self respecting computer outlet. Almost immediately, the prospect of adding new, larger disks to Xbox One consoles became a possibility.
But, as with all things like this, installing a new disk isn’t as easy as simply swapping the old one out for a new, larger, faster and all-round better one because that would just be too easy. Instead, some magic needs to be worked, which is where things start to get interesting.
Published on GitHub and available to anyone who wants it is a script that allows people to take a new disk drive and make it useable by any Xbox One. The catch is that Linux is required in order to perform the actions required to make the disk readable by an Xbox One, which may be a stumbling block for some. You’ll need root access too, which opens the door to formatting the wrong disk and possibly hosing your computer. If you’re running Linux and are thinking about shoving a new hard disk into your new Xbox One, and thus voiding your warranty, we’re fairly sure you’ll be pretty comfortable doing all this anyway.
The whole thing actually boils down to just 7 steps thanks to the script, so you can’t really go all that wrong.
- Connect your HDD and take note of what its called (ex: sda, sdb etc)
- Run the script with the device name as the first parameter
- It will bitch about missing partitions etc, but write a file with commands to create said missing partitions
- Run the created script
- Copy the correct files to the newly created partitions
- Unmount the newly created partitions
- Run the main script again
We wish you luck if you give this a try, and hopefully everything goes well, leaving you with an Xbox One complete with new, humongous storage potential.
Or a big black paperweight, depending on what you did wrong.
(Source: GitHub)
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