Take The Sting Out Of Storage Management With Sandisk’s Backlog-Friendly Game Drives

Gone are the days when we could pop a disc into a console and immediately get pulled into the latest coveted game. As digital storefronts and download-only subscription services have blossomed, so too has a gamer’s consideration for their console’s storage limits.

In any given year, the average player will have a dizzying buffet of games in their backlog that they’re meaning to dive into ahead of awards season, and that’s without accounting for the sporadic feed of live service games that explode on social media and dominate watercooler conversations. Yet with install sizes ballooning to over 150 GB in some cases, the excitement surrounding any game’s overnight success tends to come with an unprecedented asterisk.

There’s nothing worse than sitting down on launch day and realizing you’re going to have to delete something. Beyond setting aside the minutes or hours for the installation to take place, there’s also the need to reinstall the games that haven’t made the cut later down the line, tacking on precious hours before you’re back to the gaming equivalent of inbox zero.

Thankfully, there are solutions to this familiar compromise that will ensure you don’t have to pick between your favorite games. Mainline consoles typically arrive with only 1 TB of internal storage (or less) — much of which is automatically taken up by the operating system — but Sandisk’s line of officially-licensed storage expansion drives let you play with confidence by creating a considerable buffer against the threat of sudden storage management.

For those in the PlayStation® ecosystem, the SANDISK Extreme® Portable SSD for PlayStation 5 Console and PC comes in two separate configurations: 1TB for $134.99 MSRP, and 2TB¹ for $207.99 MSRP, and allows you to create a portable archive of your digital game collection. With up to 2TB¹ of space to play with, you can keep your daily drivers on internal storage without fear, quickly transferring over games from your backlog when you need them — with enhanced read speeds of up to 1000MB/s² — ensuring the process is swift.

The officially licensed drive is designed to match the color scheme and aesthetics of your PlayStation gear, so it doesn’t look out of place sitting on a TV stand. And with dust, water and drop protection built in³, you can take it with you on-the-go and know that your game collection is safe and secure. And as the PlayStation library continues to bloom on PC, desktop gamers can also use the this SSD to play their PlayStation PC games directly from the drive.

On the other side of the aisle, XboxTM enthusiasts can address their storage worries with the WD_BLACKTM C50 Storage Expansion Card for Xbox, which scales according to your needs, coming in at $99.99 for 512 GB, $155.99 for 1TB, and $259.99 for 2TB¹ of extra headroom.

The C50 is built around a super-speed NVMe SSD core that allows for high-speed, low-latency performance indistinguishable from the internal storage on your Xbox Series X|S. It slots neatly into the back of your console in the dedicated expansion port, and there’s no need to transfer games between partitions to play them — you can launch your collection of games directly from the expansion drive.

Here you can take advantage of the Quick Resume system on Xbox to drop out of the storage-stuffing open-world role-playing game you’re working through to hopping into a few rounds of battle royale, only to boot back up and find your campaign exactly where you left it. The games that aren’t going anywhere in your weekly rotation can stick around for longer as you explore the library offered by Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, earmark games for your backlog, and download the blockbusters that you’ve been meaning to catch up on.

With Sandisk’s officially licensed expansion drives, releases of live service games, yearly sports titles, and massive action-adventures can live side by side on your consoles, and you won’t have to think about deleting your favorites to start the next adventure.

For more information, visit shop.sandisk.com.

1 – 1TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user storage less.
2 – Up to 1000MB/s read speed; Based on internal testing; performance may be lower depending on host device, interface, usage conditions and other factors. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes.
3 – Based on internal testing. IPEC 60529 IP 65: Tested to withstand water flow (30 kPa) at 3 min.; limited dust contact does not interfere with operation. Must be clean and dry before use.