How to Upgrade Xbox One’s Hard Drive to SSD without Reinstalling

• Why Should We Upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive to SSD？

• Tutorial: Upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive to SSD without Reinstalling Games

• Part 1. Transfer All Gaming Data from Xbox One’s Hard Drive to SSD

• Part 2. Install the Cloned SSD into Xbox One for Replacement

• Conclusion

Why Should We Upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive to SSD？

Xbox One is Microsoft’s 3rd generation video gaming consoles as an successor to Xbox 360. It was first release on November, 2013 and it has been beloved since then and over 46.9 million sets of Xbox One has been sold worldwide. Many exclusively good games including Halo 5, Gears 5 and Quantum Break makes players crazy and gladly, I’m also one of them.

Xbox One comes with a 500 GB internal storage drive and when I heard it for the first time, I really thought it wasn’t that small so I purchased it without any hesitation. However, over time, I found the storage drained quickly and for many times, It couldn’t even finish an update of 10GB and the notification of insufficient space kept popping up. So, this is one of the reason why I decided to upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive to SSD.

Additionally, SSD gives higher loading speed. When I played Witcher 3 Wild Hunt on my console, it had usually taken 30s to reload into the game. However, after replacing Xbox One hard drive with a new SSD, it only took around 15 seconds, twice quicker than the original one.

Tutorial: Upgrade Xbox One Hard Drive to SSD without Reinstalling Games

Wanna upgrade Xbox one hard drive to a faster and more advanced SSD drive, but worry about the data loss? Relax, here we will share with you how to finish the hard drive upgrade without reinstalling everything from scratch step by step.

Part 1. Transfer All Gaming Data from Xbox One’s Hard Drive to SSD

Before replacing Xbox One’s hard drive, the first thing you need to do is to move the data from the source drive to the target SSD without which you’ll have to reinstall all games. On the internet, you can barely find any tutorial on it and Microsoft doesn’t provide any simple way either. On this condition the most powerful tool - AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition - comes as a savior.

This powerful software excellently solves the Xbox One hard drive SSD issue mentioned above by helping you move gaming data from the original Xbox One hard drive to an SSD card via a disk clone method. This can avoid data loss and ensure every game and application can work normally on the SSD drive like on the original hard drive. Moreover, you can use this software to format Xbox One’s external and internal hard drive, transfer games from HDD to SDD easily, and free up space on PS4.

Preparation You Should Do before Getting Started

1. Back the partition up first and delete the partition on the SSD because unallocated space is required.

2. Connect your Xbox One’s internal hard drive and your SSD with a computer using a mobile hard disk box.

3. Download the best disk management software to make disk-to-disk clone much easier! This is the demo version and you can only proceed to the last step but can’t apply it.

Step 1. Open the installed AOMEI Partition Assistant, click "Clone" in the main interface, and select "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk like SSD and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the data on the source disk, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to "Sector to Sector clone", and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to Optimize the performance of SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive. 

Tip: If you want to clone Windows to a smaller drive, the "Clone without resizing partitions"  button will be greyed out. Then, a Note about how to boot OS from the destination disk will pop up. Read and keep it in mind.

Step 5. After returning to the main interface, check the pending operation and click "Apply" and "Proceed" to commit the operation.

Part 2. Install the Cloned SSD into Xbox One for Replacement

After transferring all gaming data from Xbox hard drive to the target SSD by disk cloning, now, you need to swap out the old hard drive from the game console and install the cloned SSD.

1. First, you will need to peel open your Xbox One. Start on the end with the USB port and just pop the black vented cover up and it will come off.

2. Now, you’ll need to push the locking plate over and out.

3. Flip the console over, grab a sturdy spudger and push on the seams. Then, the console will become apart.

4. Carefully spin the console around to the front.

5. The front bezel is connected by a thin flat cable. So, be very careful not to damage it and just pull the loop over the connector and pull it out.

6. Drag out the WiFi antenna and speaker connections from the daughterboard.

7. After you have removed the screws from the case, carefully open and unplug the WiFi card cable on the top left.

8. Lastly, you can unplug the SATA and power connections for the drive.

9. Now, remove the bottom row of screws, remove the card and insert your new SSD.

You can also see this video if you don’t love reading

Conclusion

How to upgrade Xbox One hard drive to SSD without data loss? The tutorial above have taught your the correct method to get into the console and change the disk. Then, with the reliable disk management software AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition, you’re able to replace Xbox One’s HDD with SSD without the hassle of reinstalling games. The same method can also be applied to Xbox One S and Xbox One X. If you need to clean all data on the old hard drive, here, you can make use of the feature “wipe hard drive” to get it done. 

There are other exclusive features like splitting partition, converting system disk between MBR and GPT partition styles, and wiping system disk as well.