Ever since it was announced that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S expansion cards would arrive with the launch of the console, we have wondered what type of connection they would use and what type of card would be exactly the one that would be hidden under that chassis signed by Seagate. Well, it seems we have answers.
One CFexpress card slot
After taking a look at the Xbox Series S in our possession, we could see how the internal connections of the console’s expansion port were especially familiar to us. You just have to look carefully at the connection socket to verify that the slot has a design very similar to that of a CFexpress card reader .
In our case, we had one, as well as a SanDisk CFexpress card, so we quickly realized it. Are you using Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S Compact Flash Express cards to expand your console’s internal storage?
Enter, enter
To clear up doubts, nothing better than an extremely simple test: insert our SanDisk CFexpress card into the slot of the Xbox Series S. Bingo. The card fitted perfectly, and the contacts seemed to click together with a sharp, forceful click that left no doubt that the connection had been made perfectly. The problem? The compatibility.
A message on the screen confirmed the worst news. Our card is not compatible with the system, and it returns an error that does not appear to show any results on the official Xbox support page. We have tried to format the card in different formats, but the result remains the same. The system recognizes it, but does not allow you to use it because it is not compatible.
Considering what we have seen, it seems that our intention to expand the internal capacity of the Xbox Series S (something we urgently need) has ended in a failed attempt, and everything indicates that the solution will always be to acquire the official Microsoft accessory.
A matter of speed
According to the CompactFlash Association, there are three models of Compact Flash Express: Type A , Type B, and Type C. Each of them offers a different format and different performance, with Type A being the slowest with a maximum throughput of 8 Gbps (1 GB / s), while Type C reaches 32 Gbps (4 GB / s).
In our case we have Type B, so we could understand that the official Xbox card manufactured by Seagate works at a speed of 2 GB / s. Neither the official website of the product nor the Seagate support page share the technical data of the writing or reading speed, and although the Amazon file indicates that it reaches 3,750 MB / s in read times, something that it would correspond more to a CFexpress Type C (something that would not correspond to the size of the slot).
Seagate’s job may have been to unify the performance of the CFexpress Type C in the body of a Type B, with the peculiarity of extending its dimensions throughout, as we can see in the final design of the product.
Has Microsoft been able to improve the Compact Flash standard with Seagate’s help? Or have you just created a custom version with your own license to avoid the appearance of compatible cards? This last question could be related to the strategy that Sony seems to be following, since the manufacturer at the moment has not announced that M.2 SSD memories will be compatible with its console, to the point of having the connection socket disabled (accessible by any user) until a future system update.
That is something that for now we will have to keep asking ourselves, however, taking into account the price of CFexpress cards (600 euros for the 512 GB model), Microsoft’s official solution may not be such a bad idea after all .
