[dropcap size=dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile the official Xbox One specs and description are telling us that the console’s hard drive is not replaceable, we found out that in fact it is. As we can clearly see in the image posted by GameSpot on their site, the Xbox One comes with a standard SATA II drive that can be easily replaced by opening the console system.
However, doing so, you will void your warranty. Be warned therefore, not to open it unless it is absolutely necessary. It is unclear though whether the Xbox One console recognizes or not unformatted SATA hard drives. The one in the picture is a Samsung Spinpoint M8 ST500LM012 with 8MB cache. During warranty however, I doubt that someone will need to undertake by his own a HDD replacement. Unfortunately, there is no external storage support, but Microsoft promised us to integrate such functionalities in the future. On the other hand, users of PS4 can replace their hard drives without voiding their warranties.
On another train of thoughts, Microsoft advertises their next gen console as being the most powerful one on the market, despite the fact that most of the users think otherwise. In a recent interview with Microsoft’s Xbox Division in France, Hugues Ouvrard, Marketing Director for Xbox France claimed that Xbox One is way better and more powerful than its counterpart.
“The PS4 isn’t more powerful. There is confusion about the number of pixels. […]with the power of the cloud, the capabilities of the console are multiplied by 4. So if we connect our console to internet, then the Xbox One is the most powerful” said him.