(Pocket-lint) – What’s more annoying than having to delete a game before you wanted to? It’s becoming all too common in this day and age for gamers to be forced into hard-drive clearance on their console when a new game comes out.

• Looking for faster storage? Best SSD for Xbox Series X and Series S: Expand your game collection freely

Frankly, with the outlandish patch sizes deployed in recent times by the likes of Call of Duty: Warzone, you might just be updating a game, not even getting a new one, and still run out of space. An external hard drive can be a superb answer to that problem, letting you store potentially hundreds more games without needing to re-download them if you want to play.

Now we also know that the Xbox Series S arrives with just 500GB of space on its SSD, so even in the next generation you’ll still be wanting some more storage, for our money. 

We’ve gathered some of the very best on the market, right here, for you to choose from if you’re looking for a bit more space. 

Our pick of the best Xbox hard drives to buy today

Pocket-lint

Seagate 2TB Xbox Game Drive

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While a single terabyte might seem like a rational amount of storage (and it is!), we think 2TB is an amount that will serve most people perfectly, letting them completely forget about the risk of it filling up. 

Seagate’s drive is solidly priced and we like its bold colour scheme, which makes it hard to lose. It’s also nice and fast, and really easy to use, a winning combination. 

WD

WD_Black 5TB P10

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Western Digital had a bit of a boring brand reputation before cannily rebranding its gaming wing as WD_Black, and there’s a reason this is the first of three drives it’s got on our list.

If 2TB seems like it’ll still leave you wanting on the storage side, why not opt for this huge 5TB drive? It’s still impressively small and really nice and quick, plus we love how it looks. 

WD

WD_Black 1 TB P50 NVMe SSD

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Here’s the thing, though – there’s a reason that the next-gen Xbox Series X and Series S moved to a solid-state drive (SSD) for their storage.

The transfer speeds you get from these drives is simply game-changing, so making your external storage SSD-based is a really sensible move.

The only downside is that the cost goes up pretty significantly, as shown by this nonetheless great drive from WD.

Toshiba

Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB

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Storage doesn’t have to break the bank, though, and if you think that on balance 1TB of space is all you need, Toshiba’s got a really solid drive here.

It’s by far the most affordable option on this list, and while it won’t let you keep a limitless number of games, it’s still a serious improvement over the default storage you get. 

WD

WD_Black 8 TB D10

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Returning to the other end of the spectrum, though, this is a drive for those who just can’t bear to delete anything at all. 

This mammoth 8TB drive means that you really don’t have to get rid of any data unless you truly don’t want it. The drive has a great stand that makes it easy to arrange next to your console and keeps itself cool with its own system, so it’s a great addition to any setup.

Writing by Max Freeman-Mills.