The Xbox beta supports massive amounts of external storage

Xbox has a new beta software update Introduced today For those familiar with the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring that enables X and S Series systems to support larger external hard drives. Previously, Xbox could only support up to 16TB of space on a single USB-connected drive.

With the new update, Xbox systems can now partition hard drives larger than 16TB into segments to use the full physical storage space. A single 24TB hard disk can now be formatted into multiple partitions (the largest of which is still 16TB) so you can archive more games, applications, and media than ever before – if that’s something you want to do.

However, if you’re already using a larger than 16TB hard drive with Xbox, the company says you’ll need to erase it first to take full advantage:

Drives larger than 16TB that are already formatted will not be affected by this change and will need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives.

Although you still won’t be able to run current generation games directly from an external drive, it can be useful to back up all your installations anyway, or games designed for older systems. You will not need to re-download entire titles such as 300 GB plus Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Use an Internet connection when you want to play it again after a break, unless it needs an update of the same size.

Xbox is also releasing an update that enables new network quality indicators for cloud gaming sessions to tell you if your connection is slow and affecting your gameplay. They’ll appear as red bubbles in the upper-right side of the screen, letting you know what’s going on, like packet loss or ping, which can help you troubleshoot your connection.