XBOX Series X has 802 GB of usable space after OS and system files

Hawk269 · Sep 28, 2020

For those thinking it is jut the OS taking up all that space, it is also what they allocate in reserve for games to use. For example, quick resume uses some of this reserved space which is pre-allocated on the SSD for this. That is why some reviews were able to have more games in quick resume than others. For example, if you were to "only" play OG Xbox games you would have a ton more games you can have in quick resume versus having Xbox One games in Quick resume. What they seem to be doing is giving a specific amount of space on the SSD for this function. If a games quick resume save state takes more space, then that leaves less space for other games...hence why some previews were able to have more games in quick resume that other previews.

big_z · Sep 28, 2020

Has it ever been explained why console OS take up 100-120GB of space while windows, a much more feature rich OS only needs 30-40GB?

delete12345 · Sep 28, 2020

big_z said:
Has it ever been explained why console OS take up 100-120GB of space while windows, a much more feature rich OS only needs 30-40GB?

3 times the amount of space needed to do Hibernation (Quick Resume), for 3 different games, I guess, going by the first and second page of this thread.

exodus · Sep 28, 2020

My guess is part of the drive is being used as a makeshift SLC cache.

KodiakGTS · Sep 28, 2020

big_z said:
Has it ever been explained why console OS take up 100-120GB of space while windows, a much more feature rich OS only needs 30-40GB?

Some of that space for Series X would be due to Quick Resume. It has to reserve space on the SSD to store the state of however many games are supported. I do wonder if they'll have some toggle that will allow the user to change the number of games for that though? Would be nice for people who don't play too many games at a time to be able to claw some of that space back by cutting it down to a couple games or even a single game.

Deleted member 56752 · Sep 28, 2020

Genuinely wonder if next gen game installs will get smaller with ssd/streaming tech. I doubt it but I can hope.

Otherwise, it's going to be hard to get used to storage management every week.

Dictator · Sep 28, 2020

big_z said:
Has it ever been explained why console OS take up 100-120GB of space while windows, a much more feature rich OS only needs 30-40GB?

You have the OS and then the big on disk save space for quick resume titles. It basically saves the active RAM used for those titles onto the disk temporarily and then reloads them back into memory. If you have many titles open, it needs more space - hence how they reserved a larger amount for it.

Dreams-Visions · Sep 28, 2020

That is one fat body operating system.

Serious Sam · Sep 28, 2020

xenonium said:

Here's a comparison reference for people. Makes it clear that this is actually just a pretty normal number:

Code:

       | AdvertisedSize | DiskSizePreOS | DiskSizePostOS
XSX    | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 802 GiB (this announce)
XSS    | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | Unknown
PS5    | 825GB          | ~768 GiB      | Unknown
X1X    | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 780 GiB
PS4Pro | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 862 GiB
X1     | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | 362 GiB
PS4    | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | 408 GiB

Click to shrink...

Yes, thank you, I wanted to post this too. Now let's see how many people will take notice and be happy that this is actually 20GB+ improvement over X1X while providing so much more benefits.

big_z · Sep 28, 2020

KodiakGTS said:
Some of that space for Series X would be due to Quick Resume. It has to reserve space on the SSD to store the state of however many games are supported. I do wonder if they'll have some toggle that will allow the user to change the number of games for that though? Would be nice for people who don't play too many games at a time to be able to claw some of that space back by cutting it down to a couple games or even a single game.

Dictator said:
You have the OS and then the big on disk save space for quick resume titles. It basically saves the active RAM used for those titles onto the disk temporarily and then reloads them back into memory. If you have many titles open, it needs more space - hence how they reserved a larger amount for it.

it should show how many quick resume slots are used/available and automatically remove available slots as you fill your drive to the max. i only play 1-2 games at a time so i rather have space and dont mind waiting for an initial load as things will load quickly anyways.

Golding · Sep 28, 2020

Dictator said:
You have the OS and then the big on disk save space for quick resume titles. It basically saves the active RAM used for those titles onto the disk temporarily and then reloads them back into memory. If you have many titles open, it needs more space - hence how they reserved a larger amount for it.

hey thanks for this.. btw any eta o digital foundry's impression? :)

AntiMacro · Sep 28, 2020

The OS footprint will likely go down over time as they trim it a bit and stop holding back reserve intended for possible feature additions, but that's about what I'd expected for everything it has to do.

majornelson · Sep 28, 2020

GovernWort said:
Austin Evans says you can turn it off in his video.

That's incorrect. There is no global 'off' setting.

AwakenedCloud · Sep 28, 2020

majornelson said:
That's incorrect. There is no global 'off' setting.

Is there a way to allocate it?
Like instead of:
4 current gen ganes / 12 old games on Quick Resume
we can get
2 current gen games / 6 old games

jroc74 · Sep 28, 2020

majornelson said:
That's incorrect. There is no global 'off' setting.

Welp, thanks for clearing that up.

Still, is it like it is now, and you can turn quick boot off?

DopeyFish · Sep 28, 2020

majornelson said:
That's incorrect. There is no global 'off' setting.

Thanks for clearing that up. Didn't want that to get out of control :P

^ ah yes he must have confused quick boot with quick resume

Gestault · Sep 28, 2020

xenonium said:

Here's a comparison reference for people. Makes it clear that this is actually just a pretty normal number:

Code:

       | AdvertisedSize | DiskSizePreOS | DiskSizePostOS
XSX    | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 802 GiB (this announce)
XSS    | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | Unknown
PS5    | 825GB          | ~768 GiB      | Unknown
X1X    | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 780 GiB
PS4Pro | 1TB(1000GB)    | ~931 GiB      | 862 GiB
X1     | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | 362 GiB
PS4    | 500GB          | ~466 GiB      | 408 GiB

Click to shrink...

This is super helpful so people know what to expect. jawzpause , you might want to make this a threadmark.

SimpleCRIPPLE · Sep 28, 2020

Legit, I'm going to be buying fewer games at launch this gen. I would usually buy and then add to a backlog once downloaded, but with such little space, it's going to force me to finish what's installed before deleting and buying something new.

My wallet welcomes the change.

LilZippa · Sep 28, 2020

I'm over half way through my 8tb on my ps4. I guess I should be able to archive games I'm not playing.

MrBenchmark · Sep 28, 2020

Some are forgetting when mentioning the series S it's game sizes will be smaller than the same games on the X especially when it comes to smart delivery. And if you don't have a ton of external storage from this gen to simply plug in what have you been doing?
Between all my Xbox ones I've had I have upwards of 40TB of external storage a mix of SSD's and spinner drives each labeled different with my library of games.

LCGeek · Sep 28, 2020

entremet said:
Quick Resume.

Its not all OS.

Same for anything related to paging which can change based on usage.

Green · Sep 28, 2020

MrBenchmark said:
Some are forgetting when mentioning the series S it's game sizes will be smaller than the same games on the X especially when it comes to smart delivery. And if you don't have a ton of external storage from this gen to simply plug in what have you been doing?
Between all my Xbox ones I've had I have upwards of 40TB of external storage a mix of SSD's and spinner drives each labeled different with my library of games.

40TB of Xbox games. You must have so many gamer score. ;)

AyaisMUsikWhore · Sep 28, 2020

Hmmm... Sony having 825gb base don't make sense if the OS isn't already accounted for. Did they ever mention if the 825 was accounting for the OS, because its such an odd number to not be?

asd202 · Sep 28, 2020

X is fine but S...

Praedyth · Sep 28, 2020

Toumari said:
Does that mean the Series S will have around 303GB of storage for games? So basically you can install 2 CoDs and that's it.

Series S looking like a worst deal than the Series X by the day.

No way they are shipping a console with less than 350GB of storage.

Praedyth · Sep 28, 2020

AyaisMUsikWhore said:
Hmmm... Sony having 825gb base don't make sense if the OS isn't already accounted for. Did they ever mention if the 825 was accounting for the OS, because its such an odd number to not be?

865GB is without OS, people already ran the math on the storage modules and the 865GB checks out.

MrBenchmark · Sep 28, 2020

Green said:
40TB of Xbox games. You must have so many gamer score. ;)

I don't but my son does I don't finish many games. I'm working on that though. My daughter works for target and they clearance these 8tb seagte externals last year they where less than $100 with her discount I bought all 4 they had.

Lee Morris · Sep 28, 2020

I don't think you are going to be quick resuming 6 games on the Series S. If there is 40gb used for quick resume on the X then you'll only get 20gb on the S.

Lee Morris · Sep 28, 2020

I think people need to be honest about their gaming habits. If you were thinking of getting an S but will need to buy the 1tb expansion card, you really should just spend the extra and get an X.

Radical Larry · Sep 28, 2020

Tora said:
Remember when we thought that SSD's were simply too expensive and we'd be lucky to get 500GB of it next gen?

These next gen boxes exceeded everyone's expectations in every single way imaginable, that storage size is fine.

Only on this forum lol.

Plasma · Sep 28, 2020

It'd be nice to be able to disable quick resume and get some space back, I don't really why I'd need two games running at once.

rntongo · Sep 28, 2020

SolidJaum said:
Probably space needed for Quick Resume work properly.

Thats a lot considering the data is first compressed! If you can only have 5-6 Xbox one X games then its about 60GB before compression.

rntongo · Sep 28, 2020

Dictator said:
You have the OS and then the big on disk save space for quick resume titles. It basically saves the active RAM used for those titles onto the disk temporarily and then reloads them back into memory. If you have many titles open, it needs more space - hence how they reserved a larger amount for it.

But isn't the data compressed first before being stored to disk? And if only about 3-4 XSX titles can be on quick resume at a time wouldn't that only be 54GB before compression?

Iwao · Sep 28, 2020

PhantomArtifice said:
So considering the Series S has a 512GB SSD, we're looking at around ~330GB of storage for an all digital console?

Yikes, you're going to need more storage incredibly fast.

It doesn't help that the only expansion option costs $220 because they've engineered the SSD card to be hot swappable, when it would have cost significantly less otherwise.

platocplx said:
interesting, Im really curious about Sonys solution on resuming. because since their SSD is twice as fast it may not need as much information to hold to resume the games quickly.

I'm hoping this will be their solution too.

patientx · Sep 28, 2020

So console writes all of memory to the ssd -maybe a fixed size of it- to be used for quick resume , how much ram is usable for games ? Let's say 10GB per game, then they are saving space for 10 games for quick resume.

Ra · Sep 28, 2020

jett said:
How have people not yet noticed their consoles reserve a bunch of space in the hard drive?

Every console gen, people's eyes seem to get opened to a little bit more of the technology they are using.

Theorry · Sep 28, 2020

Tora said:
Remember when we thought that SSD's were simply too expensive and we'd be lucky to get 500GB of it next gen?

These next gen boxes exceeded everyone's expectations in every single way imaginable, that storage size is fine.

Deleted member 12352 · Sep 28, 2020

Wow... and I thought the huge partition on last gen was comically excessive.

TheRealBigRich · Sep 28, 2020

You would think every game will be COD size lol

Creation_Scapes · Sep 28, 2020

Some good news for example, Miles Morales on PS4 takes up more space than the PS5 version.

PianoBlack · Sep 28, 2020

Iwao said:
It doesn't help that the only expansion option costs $220 because they've engineered the SSD card to be hot swappable, when it would have cost significantly less otherwise.

You can add an external hard drive for cheap or bring one you already have if you're on Xbox One. Xbox One, Xbox 360, and OG Xbox games can be run directly from the external drive. Next gen games will copy between an external drive and the SSD in a few minutes.

Iwao · Sep 28, 2020

PianoBlack said:
You can add an external hard drive for cheap or bring one you already have if you're on Xbox One. Xbox One, Xbox 360, and OG Xbox games can be run directly from the external drive. Next gen games will copy between an external drive and the SSD in a few minutes.

I know that, it's just the idea that you won't see the benefits of the next-gen console if you run games off the external HDD, and then there's the inevitable and constant back and forth transferring of games because it ends up being only 330GB of usable space without spending an extra $220. It's not ideal for something designed to be affordable and accessible.

Bobbyleejones · Sep 28, 2020

Do people not realize that people build their PCs with one fast SSD and one slow one most of the time. And transfer programs to the fast one most of the time. It's the same with these next gen systems except our slow drives will external drives.

sangreal · Sep 28, 2020

That sounds about right. Should be plenty. Put your larger collection on external drive

Urðr · Sep 28, 2020

GrantDaNasty said:
Is the PS5 SSD confirmed to be 820gb total or just usable?

Total. It's supposed to have 700gb of usable space iirc.

PianoBlack · Sep 28, 2020

Iwao said:
I know that, it's just the idea that you won't see the benefits of the next-gen console if you run games off the external HDD, and then there's the inevitable and constant back and forth transferring of games because it ends up being only 330GB of usable space without spending an extra $220. It's not ideal for something designed to be affordable and accessible.

Idk, DF showed that there are still load time benefits even from an external drive (obv not nearly as large) and quick resume still works with games launched from external drives. So I think it'll be an ok experience for someone to keep their current library on a cheap multi-TB disk and reserve the SSD for next gen native games. YMMV but to me, it's a reasonable trade-off to hit $299.

Hopefully the SSD card prices do come down though, and I'd like to see a 512GB card given how expensive they have ended up being.

DJwest · Sep 28, 2020

What's the biggest USB 3.1HDD size supported? I think I'll buy 3 or 4 TB

Iztok · Sep 28, 2020

SunBroDave said:
C'mon dude. Does not knowing that really make them morons? If anything, that just makes you sound like a dick.

"Morons" is unwarranted, but they definitely shouldn't be writing/talking about tech without this very basic knowledge.
In any case, it seems obvious to me this space isn't used up solely by the OS.
SSDs run optimally *only* if they have (enough) free space on it.
I sincerely hope MS knows this and reserved space accordingly.
It'd be pretty terrible if they hadn't.

Sems4arsenal · Sep 28, 2020

Have to say: That game resume feature seems like a feature that won't be used much by me. Would rather have the SSD space.

blitzblake · Sep 28, 2020

Boy for every cool next gen bullet point/feature, there seems to be a downside that almost makes it not worth it..

super fast load times=ssd ridiculously expensive

competItive pricing=small internal storage

resume 3 games at one=even less usable storage

XBOX Series X has 802 GB of usable space after OS and system files

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